


Needs Answered

by TAFKAB



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alien Biology, Alien Culture, Alien Sex, All credit for TOS dialogue goes to TOS writers, Anal Sex, And I thought an expandable erection was alien and cool, Arguing, Banter, Break Up, But not alpha/omega knotting, But they're both in a bad spot consent-wise, Don't freak out; this isn't turning into wolfpack fic, Egregious abuse of the classic film Casablanca, Especially Theodore Sturgeon, F/M, Forgive me and read it anyway?, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Friendship/Love, God these tags are a mess now, Headology, I didn't realize it was fraught with alpha/omega connotations until it was too late, I was looking for something alien and hot, If you put this mess on AO3tags or AO3tagoftheday I'll cry, Intrigue, It's actually less consensual for Spock even though he's the aggressor, Just not my kink, Knotting, M/M, Medical Analysis, Medical Conditions, Mildly Dubious Consent, No Alpha/Omega dynamics, No mpreg, No way would McCoy refuse to save Spock, Pon Farr, Pon farr isn't optional, Profanity, Psychoanalysis, Sorry if you LIKE wolfpack fic, Switching, Teasing, Telepathic Bond, There's a bulbus glandis involved but no anal sniffing, Vulcan Biology, Vulcan Kisses, Vulcan Mind Melds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-04
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-07-29 07:34:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 47,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7675645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TAFKAB/pseuds/TAFKAB
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the wake of <i>Star Trek: Beyond</i>, Leonard McCoy can tell Spock and Uhura's relationship isn't going to last.  </p><p>Feeling a little lonely himself and understanding how painful it can be to lose at love, he makes a plan to befriend Spock in order to help him get over his impending breakup.  He believes he just doesn't want Spock to retreat from humanity and shut himself away behind his stoic Vulcan facade... but he doesn't realize how recent events have begun to change his feelings toward his Vulcan colleague and nemesis.</p><p>Nor does he anticipate the Machiavellian cleverness of Jim Kirk in manipulating them both to throw them together.  Or is his captain's helpful meddling just a colossal coincidence?   McCoy can't be sure....</p><p>BONUS OPPORTUNITY!  Find the factual detail I got wrong and feel infinitely superior!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you might find you get what you need._ \-- The Rolling Stones

*****

Sitting belly-up to a stiff drink, Leonard H. McCoy was outwardly minding his business. Inwardly, he kept an eye on the room behind him via the mirror behind the bar. The image he saw reflected back at him looked relaxed. In fact, he was busy, scheming away at a plan that he’d never regarded as more than an amusing intellectual exercise. Until now, maybe. 

Some people might accuse him of coasting, letting life happen, going with the flow… but McCoy knew that to get results, some people said you had to have a plan. All the annoying life gurus preached the gospel of life plans with small reachable goals and neatly measured increments of effort, combined with plenty of reflection and preparation. It all looked easy and self-evident on paper, but not so much in practice. The psychoanalytical self-motivation field was maddeningly logical while still somehow managing to be emotionally fuzzy and indistinct enough to make anyone but the most stubborn touchy-feely neo-hippies shudder in disgust.

That didn’t change the fact that planning made sense, and it got results. He’d seen it work, after all. Before he ever figured out what it was he wanted, he’d watched a master planner move in and sweep the board in only a few perfectly-timed and well-executed moves. He’d studied her methods and found them relentless and impeccable, perfectly tailored to both circumstance and to their… victim wasn’t the word. Maybe opponent was a better one, these days.

You had to have a plan, yes, but Uhura’s unprecedented success at getting to Spock’s finer feelings also demonstrated you needed to have a lot of things fall in line if you wanted your plan to work. Respect was one. Hard-earned respect. He had that; he knew it for certain now. But you needed luck, too. A stroke of luck like the destruction of Vulcan didn’t come along every day. Not that he’d want it to. But it had provided the chink Uhura needed to set roots in fertile soil and start dismantling Spock’s impervious emotional armor. 

In McCoy’s opinion, that was mostly a good thing. Spock wasn’t all Vulcan; he needed someplace to vent some steam so it wouldn’t build up and blow him sky-high. But there was something about the relationship between the two that just didn’t work, not in McCoy’s opinion-- and he’d seen failed relationships. Hell, he’d done failed relationships. He could spot one failing from a mile away, and when this one went, damned if was going to sit back and watch while it took all of Spock’s hard-won humanity with it, turning him back into a stuffy, impervious hard drive for information storage and processing.

So McCoy had made a plan to keep that from happening, and he was ready to put it in motion. He'd make friends with that green-blooded hobgoblin and bring him out of himself even if it killed them both.

He hoped that now that the preliminary groundwork had been accomplished, it wouldn’t take something quite as drastic for someone to get close to Spock next time. He was going to need a friend when this thing went down, and in the absence of any other candidates, McCoy was willing to step up and fill the gap. 

His vigil was rewarded as the turbolift swished open and Spock ushered Uhura out of it with a gesture that looked courtly and polite enough, but actually probably only indicated that she’d been 0.024 meters closer to the door. McCoy chuckled into his drink. He didn’t much like the synthesized whiskey that was the best he could get on tap aboard the Enterprise, but watching Spock and Uhura flail the proverbial clue-stick at each other without ever wising up was enough to drive him to drink it.

When they finally broke up for good, he’d have to be there to pick up the pieces. The tableau behind him confirmed that all he had to do was wait. 

Probably not for long, either. Spock’s on-again-off-again relationship with the chief communications officer was perennially on the rocks. Uhura could be as mercurial as she was meticulous, and sometimes McCoy wondered if she regretted the success of her campaign. Her regard for Spock was warm, deep, and genuine-- but it was anything but unconditional, and Spock was just as conditional as they came. He had baggage pouring out both of his pointed ears, for crying out loud! 

That was the one thing she hadn’t counted on, McCoy thought: the one weak support beam under the perfect structure of her plan to get Spock in her sights, then bag him, tag him, and put him on top of her truck.

He took a sip of his synthehol. It wasn’t a patch on Jim Beam, and he grimaced as it went down. He let his eyes travel back to the mirror. The lounge was one of several new social features in the rebuilt Enterprise. Ten Forward, they were calling it, and it served his purpose well. Covering himself by drinking, he discreetly kept an eye on the latest argument as it went down behind him. 

Uhura spoke, too low to be overheard, but McCoy amused himself by composing lines for her in his mind. ‘What are you thinking/feeling/doing next Tuesday?’ ‘Are you happy to be here with me tonight or are you thinking of work?’ Or even the old standard ‘Do you think this dress makes me look fat?’ It didn’t really matter; Spock didn’t have any of the answers, and the outcome would be the same in any case.

‘I am thinking about the implications of trans-warp technology upon interstellar exploration.' 'Nothing.' 'Working.' 'I am thinking of both.' 'No.’ (Or even ‘Yes,’ there _was_ no right way to answer that last one, not if you had a dick-- and as Spock’s physician, McCoy was sure he did.)

Next would come her inevitable dissatisfaction. No doubt she’d been looking for validation, not Spock’s immediate and honest answer. His answers tended to be pretty self-centered, and that wasn't what she was looking for. She’d pick at nits, complaining and ignoring the sacrifice represented by his presence here tonight-- or maybe she’d pick at him _because_ she knew spending time with her this way was more a sacrifice for him than a pleasure. At least, that was what happened with him and Jocelyn. And while he wasn’t privy to their private conversations, publicly it looked to him like that was happening to Spock and Uhura, too.

Amusing himself by using condensation to make glass-shaped impressions in a cocktail napkin, McCoy watched the energy between them shift as Spock went on the defensive. The refraction of the mirror made him look more alien, his skin appearing even more green than usual. 

McCoy chuckled again, sympathetically, as Uhura rallied to her own defense. Spock might not fold his arms, and he didn’t lean away from her, but he was obviously closing down nonetheless. His posture remained ramrod straight, but he was as rigid as a steel beam, his jaw tight. His trapezius muscles, abdominals, and probably even his glutes were locked up like a vault. McCoy made his diagnosis point by point. Capillaries constricting, fight or flight instincts and secretions kicking in only to be rigidly suppressed, blood pressure rising, heart rate increasing, headache imminent. It was a good thing Spock’s cardiac health was tip-top, that’s all he could say.

James Kirk chose that moment to saunter in, spotting McCoy at the bar and coming over to join him, spoiling amateur spy hour for the evening.

“What’s your poison?” McCoy drawled.

“Bloody Mary? Fuzzy navel?” Kirk equivocated, trying to placate him with healthy ingredients. McCoy scoffed.

“Girly drinks.” He gestured to the bartender-- a hopped up name for a replicator jockey drawn more or less at random from the general pool of undistinguished, miscellaneous new ensigns. “He’ll have what I’m having.”

“You’ve been in here a lot lately.”

“I’ve been thirsty.” McCoy felt a little lightheaded from the synthehol; he didn’t specify for what. All this spying was a little over the top if he was only concerned about Spock’s love life. He was just bored, that was all.

“No way. You always say this stuff is swill.” Jim made a face at his drink. “And you’re right,” he said after swallowing. “So you must have some other motive for coming in here almost every night.”

McCoy snorted. “Well it sure as hell isn’t the company.” He swirled the amber fluid in his glass and resolved to slow down, glad of his careful planning. Jim was right; he came in here often, even when he didn’t expect Spock and Uhura to show up. It dragged a nice red herring over his trail. 

“Well, I know it isn’t for the view. You have your back to the viewport. Is it someone on the staff? Got your eye on some sweet young thing?” That was Kirk all over; he was obsessed with sex, but he also had a nose like a bloodhound for intrigue.

“Please.” McCoy scoffed, wrinkling his nose. “I’m no predator.”

“Exactly why it makes so little sense for you to lurk in here so much when you’re off-shift. You’ve never been a pick-up artist. You’ve got something else going on.” Kirk looked at his synthesized whiskey and picked it up for a sniff. “I’ll find out what it is eventually.” 

“The design team advertised this place as the nerve center of the NCC-1701A, the preferred social resort for the new Starfleet crew of the next century,” McCoy pointed out, facetious. “I’m just keeping a judicious finger on the pulse of the crew.”

“Nice try.” Kirk wasn’t buying a bit of it. “Are you watching for problem drinkers?”

“I’m surveying morale.”

“How is it?” Kirk tipped back his drink.

“It’s terrible, at least up here at the bar.” McCoy ordered them both another. “I’m implementing a plan to improve it as we speak.”

“By getting it laid, drunk, or possibly beaten up?”

“You’re fishing.”

“I can’t take you fishing and ply you with beer. There aren’t any class M planets for light years, and even if there were I don’t have a case of beer.” Kirk cut his eyes at McCoy, smirking.

“I hear good things about methane ice-fishing.”

“If you want to catch frostbite, maybe. C’mon, Bones. Give!”

“I’m keeping an eye on the crew, like I told you.” Technically, it was true-- if way too general to be accurate.

“Or one crew member, maybe?”

Damn it, he was like a bloodhound on a scent. “If so, just be glad it isn’t you.”

“I can use the ship’s computer to cross-reference who’s always here when you’re here.”

“You do that. You’re going to come up with the bartender and a few of the staff, maybe. Nobody else.”

“Then I’ll ask Spock to figure it out and give me a report.”

Shit. McCoy huffed. “He won’t dig up anything you haven’t.”

“Care to wager on that?”

“What is the subject of this hypothetical wager?” Spock appeared without warning; apparently Uhura had cut him loose for the evening already. She was nowhere to be seen. McCoy could have groaned.

“I’m wagering you can figure out why Dr. McCoy is hanging out in Ten Forward every evening,” Kirk leaned back, winking at McCoy with friendly malice. “If you can, he owes me one ‘get out of your annual physical free’ card.”

Spock tilted his head. “But your physical is both prudent and regulated by Starfleet protocol. Why should I participate in such an illogical and unrewarding endeavor?”

“Because if I win, I’ll make sure you get to skip your next physical, too.”

Spock pondered, clearly tempted. 

“You can’t do that!” McCoy blustered.

“Captain!” Kirk pointed out.

“Medical imperative!” McCoy challenged.

“I will bring a full report to you at my earliest opportunity,” Spock told Jim, settling the argument, and McCoy sulked, glaring at the melting ice in his glass.

Jim grinned at him, unrepentant. “So, what do you want if you win, Bones, and he can’t figure you out?”

“Your heads on a plate,” he grumbled. He wouldn’t be able to go near Spock for the next six months. No, wait. He’d have to, or the cold-blooded bastard would take it as evidence and correctly deduce that he was somehow part of the cause for McCoy’s unusual behavior. 

Damn it. He’d just have to manufacture something for them to find and forfeit the exams until an emergency gave him the clout to pull medical rank and examine them anyway.

Jim’s eyes sparkled as if he were the mind reader, not Spock at all. “If you win, doctor, no transporter for a year-- you can use the shuttlecraft except for emergencies. And I’ll let you poke and prod me as much as your little heart desires.”

“Spock too,” he insisted immediately. That would be his expected reaction, after all. 

Spock opened his mouth to protest, but shut it again after Kirk gave him a sharp look. “Agreed,” Kirk said.

“Good luck,” McCoy told Spock, raising his glass in mock toast. “You’ve got your work cut out for you trying to find a motive and a pattern that don’t exist.”

“Misdirection,” Kirk whispered loudly. “Don’t listen to him.”

Spock merely raised a brow and turned dark eyes on McCoy, studying him with care. He could almost hear the circuits whirring behind that inscrutable gaze.


	2. Chapter 2

McCoy kept going to Ten Forward four or five nights a week just to make a point, though Spock and Uhura made no further appearances there together. 

Uhura appeared in sickbay a day or two later, red-eyed, and McCoy had no intention of eavesdropping. However, he was sitting at his desk with the door open and Nurse Chapel was so overcome with sympathy she completely forgot to set the privacy forcefield before hurrying to embrace her friend.

“It’s over this time. I mean it.” Uhura appeared to be leaking slightly at the eyes, more out of anger than sorrow, though McCoy guessed the anger itself was rooted in pain. “No more second chances. It’s only hurting us both to keep trying.”

Christine swept her up, mothering her with hugs and clucking sounds. “You love him, I know you do. And he loves you, I’m sure of it.”

“Sometimes that isn’t enough. We’ve tried hard-- he’s been trying, too, but the differences are just too much.” Uhura’s voice fell. “I need someone who can meet some of my needs without us having a confrontation over every single action, Christine. It’s tearing us both apart.”

“It’s not your fault,” Christine murmured consolation. 

“It’s not his either, not all of it. It’s nobody’s fault, but we’re both miserable. I think it’s kindest just to make a clean break-- as clean as we can by this point. It’s,” her voice cracked, her hard-earned composure vanishing as the pain came out in gasping sobs. “Logical,” she managed, before she wept in earnest.

“He’ll see that,” Christine petted her, helpless to do more than wait until the storm had run its course.

McCoy supposed he _would_ see it that way.

Uhura soon reclaimed control, blowing her nose. “I mean, I’m not meeting his needs, either, whatever they are. Not that he’d tell me. The only one I’m sure of is that he needs me not to be too needy. But I know there are other things, things I’m not even aware of. You know, I didn’t even realize he was too cold trying to spend the night in my quarters? He couldn’t rest after we finished; he’d just lie there and try to raise his core temperature by going into some kind of meditative trance. And I didn’t even guess, because he always turned the thermostat down to Terran standard for me whenever I visited his rooms, so for months I had no idea it was a problem.” 

That satisfied McCoy’s prurient curiosity on at least one point-- the two of them hadn’t been celibate. Not that he’d really thought they were; Uhura always kept her contraceptive injections current with zealous promptness. He shook his head, rolling his eyes at himself.

“I’m just going to invite him out to dinner when we make port at Starbase 3. I’m going to end it, and I’ll return his mother’s necklace whether he wants it or not. I’m not comfortable knowing my ex can find me wherever I go.” She sniffled, wiping her eyes. “One final, clean cut, then we can start recovering.”

Very surgical. McCoy sighed, feeling sorry for them both. Ending a serious relationship was miserable, especially when both people cared, but sometimes it all boiled down to basic incompatibility. All the caring in the world, and all the good intentions, couldn’t fix that if it was bad enough.

Feeling guilty, he toggled the force field and sat back in his desk chair. Now that he knew the hour and the day, he could get ready to step up to the bat. He just needed a little luck.

He didn’t have to wait long before he ran into Spock, either. The Vulcan was at a loose end now that he and Uhura weren’t spending every evening together, and he took his commitment to Jim seriously.

McCoy queried to find out who’d been accessing his computer data, and was unsurprised to find Spock had made an extensive study of his whereabouts, activities, and public logs. Jim had done some prying, too. But McCoy knew their research didn’t reveal much, if anything. He’d kept all this in his mind, securely encrypted on the wetware between his ears. If Spock took it in his head to violate _that_ particular security system, then McCoy would make an interstellar incident out of it. 

Thanks to the privacy field, Spock reached his office before McCoy was aware of the first officer’s arrival in sickbay. McCoy looked up from a tedious report on recent tox-scan screenings to greet him. “Well, Mr. Spock. Or should I call you Sherlock? How goes the sleuthing?” McCoy made his smile as sharklike as he could. Spock liked a good mystery, and by god, McCoy was just the sonofabitch to give him one.

“Adequately, doctor.” Spock raised an elegant brow.

McCoy laughed. “Just admit it. All your computer queries are getting you exactly nowhere.”

“On the contrary. I have eliminated a large number of potential explanations for your behavior.”

“What behavior is that, precisely? Do tell me more about this wildly uncharacteristic behavior you and Jim have so painstakingly identified. He wouldn’t put you on the scent just because I spent a couple of evenings in a bar.” He put some extra megawatts into his smile, moving from shark to sunshine in the blink of an eye.

Spock looked dyspeptic and drew himself up in a way McCoy read as long-suffering. “Captain Kirk cites intuition rather than hard evidence as grounds for his suspicions, doctor. He knows you well, and it is my opinion that his hunch is based on subliminal observations he finds it difficult to quantify or articulate, but which are nevertheless present. For example, you may have unwittingly revealed subtle tonal or articulated verbal cues, micro-expressions, and other minor observable psychological phenomena, accumulating to form patterns he has recognized over time. I believe there is a 70.4% chance his observations are correct.”

“That’s just fancy talk for an unsubstantiated gut feeling.”

“The captain has a history of accuracy in such things.” Spock paused, and another man might have sighed. “Dr. McCoy, I have come to propose a bargain. As I find myself fully occupied with prior obligations, I had hoped we could arrive at terms satisfactory to us both to secure your disclosure.”

McCoy sat back and regarded him evenly. “You’re assuming there’s something to disclose.”

“I am prepared to ensure that both the captain and myself cooperate fully with routine physical examinations as per Starfleet regulations despite the terms of the wager.”

“That’s not much of a concession, given that I can exercise my medical imperative and make those physicals happen anyway, if I judge there’s sufficient cause.”

“Your engagement in the bargaining process indicates you do, in fact, have something to conceal.”

They stared at one another for a moment, at an impasse.

“So you think we’re just haggling over price.” McCoy felt an unfamiliar sensation of power, and realized he held the advantage. 

“Do you have one?” Spock regarded him with placid curiosity.

McCoy smiled. “You can’t buy a man who doesn’t want anything.”

“Are you that man?”

“Mr. Spock, I’m afraid I am. Though I have every reasonable sympathy for your position, it also gives me a great deal of pleasure to see you chasing a wild goose.” 

Spock frowned, nonplused, and McCoy had to grin at the mental picture he was no doubt entertaining. “If you mean to imply I’m seeking information that does not exist, I can assure you, doctor, that I am not wasting my time in pursuit of nonexistent waterfowl, domesticated or otherwise,” Spock rose to the bait. Maybe McCoy was just projecting, but he thought he spotted a flicker of annoyance crossing Spock’s finely-chiseled features. He sat patiently and waited for Spock’s next move.

“My considered opinion is that your behavioral issue is of a personal rather than a professional nature. I have found no basis for a behavioral anomaly in any computer records or logs. Therefore, doctor, I am adjusting my method of inquiry.”

McCoy raised a brow, inviting him to continue.

“In service to my observations, I mean to become your constant companion during our leisure hours until such time as I uncover the evidence I seek, or until you decide the inconvenience of disclosure is less than that of enduring my presence.” Spock spoke tightly.

“That’s quite a threat, Mr. Spock.” McCoy grinned at him. The Vulcan couldn’t have delivered himself up to McCoy’s purposes any more neatly if he’d tied a bow around his neck and had Jim push him down to sickbay in a wheelbarrow. “How are you planning to square all this constant companionship with Lieutenant Uhura?”

A muscle in Spock’s jaw twitched slightly, once. “I have reason to believe that soon after our arrival at Starbase 3, the lieutenant will no longer factor into my personal plans.”

McCoy relented slightly. So even a Vulcan could see the writing on the wall. “My sympathies.” He eyed Spock for a moment, trying to gauge the depth of his distress, but Spock was ready for him, and he gave up about as much reaction as a particularly disinterested brick wall.

“Well, then.” McCoy stood up, placing his hands flat on his desk. “My shift’s over. You’re free to do whatever the hell you want, but I’m going down to Ten Forward for a drink.” He started walking without bothering to look back.

He was pretty sure Spock would follow.


	3. Chapter 3

Spock became a familiar fixture around Sickbay and in Ten Forward over the next few days. McCoy took great pains to keep things interesting, baiting him alternately with scientific experiments, insults, and offering up the occasional tantalizing, if random, hint at whatever it was he was supposed to be up to. 

He stayed aboard the Enterprise when they docked at Starbase 3, though he could have taken advantage of a shuttlecraft and departed. But McCoy had a hunch, and he’d made some careful preparations-- with just a little help from Scotty. Even though Keenser didn’t eat much, he was a veritable packrat. Scotty swore the little engineer could get his hands on anything in the universe you could ever want-- all without ever uttering a peep.

After walking away from Engineering with a bottle of Romulan ale and about six pounds of the best dark Swiss chocolate, McCoy was prepared to believe in the magic. He’d had to trade Keenser a bottle of Saurian brandy and promised to bring him all the fresh ground coffee he could get. Inexplicably enough, he’d also wound up with a six-legged lizard, stuffed and ready to be mounted on a wall somewhere. Maybe he’d put it in his office, just to give nervous new crewmen something to stare at. It needed a name, too. Maybe he’d call it Bob.

He dropped Bob off in Sickbay and stashed the candy and liquor in a utility pack, then went to his quarters. “Computer. Notify me when Commander Spock comes aboard,” he commanded, and sat down with a classic Ferrol Sams novel.

Uhura did quick work; less than two hours later the computer chimed quietly. “Commander Spock has just arrived on transporter platform 3.”

It figured the pointy-eared party pooper would retreat back to the ship to lick his wounds instead of staying on the starbase like any sane person. 

McCoy sidled out into the hall and took up a post next to Spock’s door, dangling the pack from two fingers. He didn’t wait long before Spock appeared, slightly surprised to see him, his face absolutely blank-- but his muscles were locked stiff and McCoy wasn’t fooled for a minute.

“Hey.” McCoy gave him a lopsided smile. “Girl talk gets around, I’m afraid. You shouldn’t be by yourself at a time like this.”

Spock’s face, already grim, closed up even further. 

“Before you get your drawers tied in a knot, you should check this out,” McCoy lifted the pack. “I’ve got a whole bottle of Romulan ale right here, still with the brewery seal intact.”

“Romulan ale is illegal,” Spock replied reflexively, and McCoy raised an eyebrow at him, declining to take the bait. “You should be aware I have no interest in alcoholic beverages of any kind, doctor.”

“Well, that’s not all I’ve got.” He reached into the pack and drew out a box, tilting it so the gilt letters caught the light. “Swiss chocolate do you any better?”

He could have sworn Spock’s pupils dilated at the sight of the label, but he held himself perfectly still. 

“Some of this stuff has an 85% cacao content,” McCoy glanced at the ingredients. “That ought to get the old endorphins going. Healthy stuff, full of flavonoids.”

Spock bestirred himself and stepped forward, triggering the door, so McCoy took it as an invitation and followed him inside. Spock obviously hadn’t been expecting company; the air was baking hot and so dry the inside of McCoy’s nostrils prickled. 

“Cozy,” he commented, and Spock flashed him a look, reaching to activate the computer. “No, don’t adjust it for me.” He pulled off his overshirt and tossed it across the back of a chair, then quickly flopped down and crossed his ankles, brazenly making himself at home. He tossed Spock a gold-embossed box and pulled out the bottle for himself. “Got a tumbler anywhere? Let’s get started on this stuff. The chocolate won’t last long in this heat.”

They put the rest of the chocolate in a cooling unit and Spock provided McCoy with a glass, then teased open the top of the package, surveying its contents before selecting one. McCoy was already sweating by the time he broke the seal on the bottle and poured a shot, pausing to appreciate its pale blue shimmer against the light.

“If I understand correctly, doctor, you are supposed to drink it, not look at it.” Spock regarded him levelly. 

“Hush, pointy. I’ll get around to it soon enough.” Bones silenced him with authority. “I’ll have you know there is no wrong way to enjoy illegal alcohol, as long as you finish by drinking it.” 

Spock raised a brow. “Then I believe the proper expression is ‘bottoms up,’ doctor.”

McCoy took a healthy mouthful of the potent liquor as Spock sank his teeth into a truffle, then swallowed. It had quite a burn as it went down-- as harsh as Spock’s chocolate was smooth, McCoy guessed. He could feel the vapors immediately carrying a powerful punch of drunkenness straight to his brain. 

“Oh, that’s good stuff.” He lifted the glass to appreciate it again. “Got a kick to it.”

Spock didn’t answer, wearing an inward, absorbed look as he let the chocolate melt on his palate. After a long moment he swallowed and spoke. “Indeed. Quite good.”

“Keenser’s quite a scavenger,” McCoy took a more cautious sip. “If you want to complain that this stuff’s illegal, take it up with him. But don’t let him talk your ear off.”

Spock gave him a sidelong look. “Is he the source where you procured these supplies?”

“Off the record, yes he is.”

Spock acquiesced to that wordlessly, taking a second piece of chocolate. It seemed the friendly thing to do to join him with another swig of the potent ale. 

An hour later, Spock still wouldn’t discuss the breakup and McCoy was so soused he stopped trying to sit upright in Spock’s hard, straight chair and simply let himself collapse in gradual stages down onto the floor. Sitting there with his back against the wall, he peeled off his uncomfortably damp undershirt and glared at it, then mopped his face and dropped it on the floor. The reddish light Spock favored only made the room seem hotter, he decided. 

Spock regarded him owlishly from across the room, where he sat on the edge of his bed, a half-melted chocolate between his fingers.

“Figures you’d only have one chair in here-- about as comfortable as sitting on a Judas chair,” McCoy griped. “Let me guess. You like it.”

“It serves its intended purpose while encouraging good posture.” Spock stared at him some more. “Perhaps if your position in it were more upright, you would not find it so torturous to sit there.”

“Fuck my posture.” McCoy slouched even deeper, fumbling for the bottle. How had he drunk so much of it already?

“I hope that is intended as a rhetorical statement rather than a request, for committing such an act would doubtless present considerable difficulty.” He spoke slowly and precisely, with great care.

McCoy considered that statement for a moment, scowling with sudden, foggy suspicion. “You’re drunk. You’d never say that if you were sober. How come you’re drunk? You haven’t touched the ale.” He glared at the bottle, suspicious, but it still remained about two thirds full. “It can’t be the--” he stopped suddenly. “It is, isn’t it.”

Spock deliberately bit into another chocolate and licked his narrow lips when some sort of liqueur or cordial escaped the crushed shell. After a moment McCoy realized he was staring. “I’ll be damned,” he muttered, and poured himself another two fingers. He nearly knocked it all back at once before reconsidering and only taking half. He didn’t want to pass out on Spock’s floor, for Christ’s sake. It was too hot in here; he’d bake like a biscuit.

“Bring me one of those things,” he demanded suddenly. Spock rose to comply, seating himself at McCoy’s side and offering the box.

McCoy frowned at the truffles on display, then tentatively selected a medium-brown piece with something white drizzled over it. “Milk chocolate,” he approved with his mouth full, then licked his fingers. The chocolates were so soft they were practically liquid, melting and squashing at the first touch. He had sticky brown stuff all over his hands, and he didn’t even have a shirt-tail to wipe them on! Besides, he could still remember his mama fussing at him for staining his clothes with chocolate ice-cream.

Shrugging philosophically, McCoy began to lick his fingers. The chocolate tasted ridiculously sweet compared to the spicy burn of the ale, and he went after every bit. 

He was about halfway through, sucking his index finger between his lips, when he realized Spock was watching him intently, his eyes strange and dark. McCoy whipped his finger out of his mouth, feeling oddly embarrassed. Spock only tilted his head, thoughtful, then lifted one slim, elegant hand to his own mouth and licked.

 _Holy shit._ McCoy froze, startled, unable to look away. Spock’s hands were covered with the stuff. He’d eaten almost an entire box of luscious, melting truffles, and hadn’t stopped to bother with hygiene. Now he gave his fingers the dedicated attention of a connoisseur, his finely-chiseled lips moving rhythmically. McCoy could almost imagine the rasp of his tongue curling around the sweet, sticky skin, and a flush of heat rushed through him, well-nigh unbearable in the stifling cabin.

Something big was happening here, and McCoy wasn’t anywhere near sober enough to get a handle on it. The room was starting to spin, and he reached for the wall, clinging against a sudden sensation of vertigo. 

“You’re drunk as a skunk.”

“Does the species _mephitis mephitica_ make a habit of consuming alcohol?” Spock finished licking his finger and regarded it with curiosity. 

“Show-off.” McCoy decided the wall was entirely too hazardous for occupation and transferred himself to the floor. Overhead, the ceiling revolved, pulsating with an alarming quick rhythm that echoed the thundering beat of his own heart. It just figured the green-blooded sonofabitch would get drunk from eating chocolate.

“I am nowhere near as drunk as you, doctor. And yet, I think….” Spock trailed off, still studying his chocolate-smeared hands. “I am sufficiently drunk that I have reached a state of equanimity,” he concluded decisively. “Your intervention is most appreciated.”

“Glad to hear it.” McCoy wasn’t sure anymore whether he was lying on the floor staring up at the ceiling or lying on the ceiling staring down at the floor. Did he mean emotional equanimity? McCoy’s own had vanished, and only the fact that he no longer had any idea where the door was kept him from bolting then and there, for fear he would do or say something stupid he couldn’t take back. He cast about for something safe to look at and his gaze fell on one of the little stone idols that decorated a random shelf. It had a flame flickering in its belly, and he thought hazily that he knew just how it felt. “The hell _is_ that thing?” He reached for his glass and drained the dregs of the ale. 

“Doctor, I grow increasingly concerned regarding the state of your liver,” Spock intoned solemnly, changing the subject and ignoring the question. 

“Now listen here, you pointy-eared pain in the ass. My liver’s fine,” McCoy insisted, though it was probably the only major organ he was prepared to vouch for at the moment. 

Spock resumed licking his fingers and McCoy shut his eyes with a groan. Yes, there was definitely something wrong with him. Every possible organ was rebelling, including some that definitely knew better. His whole sympathetic nervous system, and hell, his entire endocrine system, were lit up like a Christmas tree. He flung his arm over his eyes and his elbow knocked against the bottle, which sloshed, reminding him how much he’d drunk.

“This stuff should be illegal,” he groaned.

“As I told you before, it is.” Even drunk, Spock sounded insufferably smug.

“Yeah, well, some of us can’t get off on-- can’t get drunk on,” he corrected himself hastily, “just eating chocolate candy. I’m gonna kill Keenser.” His mind was drifting. Had he spoken his last thought aloud? 

“That would make it impossible to utilize his services in obtaining further contraband, and is therefore clearly illogical.”

McCoy shifted his arm enough to peek out from under it. It took him a while. “I don’t believe you just said that.” His voice was so slurred he could barely make out his own words.

“Dr. McCoy, while I know your attempt to keep me company during this time is kindly meant, it is my considered opinion that you are on the verge of losing consciousness. Would you like me to return you to your quarters first?”

He didn’t remember anything after that.

*****

McCoy woke, wondering why the air conditioning had gone out. Was the power off? But no, there was a bone-deep hum of power in the air, and after a moment’s disorientation he transitioned from his boyhood home in Georgia to the Starship Enterprise. But it was hot enough to fry an egg. Had the atmospheric controls failed? Were they plunge-diving into the heart of a red giant sun?

He forced his eyes open and blinked at unfamiliar walls swathed in what appeared to be red velvet drapery. A few spartan shelves interrupted the womblike effect of the blood-red fabric, supporting a variety of angular stone statues and a small collection of odd-looking knives. 

It was as hot as a sheriff’s pistol and the scorching air had left him parched, his lips cracked and dry. McCoy lifted himself on one elbow and looked around with dawning dismay.

Spock’s quarters. He’d fucking passed out in Spock’s quarters, and Spock had tucked him up in his own bed. 

“Jesus H. Johnnycake fucking Christ,” McCoy whispered in horror. He still had his uniform trousers on, but his shirts were missing-- he vaguely remembered struggling out of them in rebellion against the heat-- and his shoes and socks had gone. His head thumped agony through him with the same steady rhythm and blazing intensity of a pulsar, and his mouth tasted like an entire armada of incontinent Gorns had camped there for a week. 

Now this… _this_ was aberrant and unusual behavior by any standard you cared to apply. He’d never get rid of Spock’s inquiry now.

McCoy struggled to sit up, cradling his pounding head in his hands to keep it from falling off and rolling across the floor. After a few minutes he was able to stagger to his feet and out into the antechamber, where he found his clothing neatly folded, waiting for him on the seat of Spock’s single chair. Not only that, but a tray sat waiting for him on the table, neatly covered.

Lifting the lid revealed a pitcher of something green and fluid-- an electrolyte solution of some kind, McCoy supposed-- and a plate of fruits and vegetables, still tolerably cold compared to the ambient air, with a single chocolate truffle on a napkin for dessert. He made a face when he sampled the drink, but forced himself to down it all in measured swallows.

Surprisingly his belly tolerated it well enough he was soon ready to face the food, and once he’d begun eating, he found himself polishing off the fruit in short order. As he did, the computer terminal on the table flickered to life, displaying Spock’s impassive face. The bastard looked bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, showing no evidence of a hangover like McCoy’s.

“As you were obviously incapacitated, I’ve taken the liberty of cancelling your morning appointments and providing a nourishing breakfast. Thank you for your companionship and the chocolate, doctor.”

The terse message winked out, leaving McCoy to rest his aching forehead against the table and swear. “Fucking fucking _fucking_ fuckety-fuck,” he groaned, throwing in several extra fucks for good measure. 

He picked up the chocolate left for his dessert and realized it had two fingerprints pressed into its sides. Helpfully his brain presented him with an image of Spock licking rich melted chocolate from his long, graceful fingers. 

“No way that happened. No _fucking_ way.” He glared at the remnants of the Romulan ale, which Spock had left next to his clothes. Time to get dressed and get the hell out of Dodge. There was a hangover remedy hypospray in sickbay with his name on it. 

He tidied Spock’s bed in haste, then struggled into his clothes and fled with the remnants of his ale and the tray, leaving not a wrack behind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> McCoy is reading Ferrol Sams’ trilogy _Run with the Horsemen,_ _The Whisper of the River,_ and _When All the World Was Young_. The trilogy is richly detailed, vivid, realistic, and warm; it follows the life of a whip-smart Georgia boy who gets into incredible amounts of mischief, learns to resist and overcome racism, struggles with his faith, and eventually conquers both college and military service in World War II as part of his quest to become a medical doctor. These amazing novels are right up Bones’s alley, and they come highly recommended by this author. ^_^


	4. Chapter 4

Leonard McCoy groaned and rubbed the knot on the back of his head, wondering not at all idly about the possibility of concussion.

“‘Calm down,’ he said. ‘No big deal,’ he said. ‘Stop whining,’ he said. ‘Routine mission. What could go wrong? Just shut up and enjoy it,’ he said.” He tried to take comfort in the litany, retreating behind his complaints. 

“Rest assured, doctor, you do not need to repeat the captain’s words. I was present when he spoke them.” Spock sat in something approximating the lotus position, outwardly serene, ignoring the two inches of clammy, squelching muck in which he sat, his shoulders hunched forward so his head wouldn’t strike the low, slimy ceiling. The two of them had just enough room to crouch without touching.

At least it was next to impossible to make eye contact. McCoy had been trying to avoid that ever since the night of the Big Drunk, as he referred to it in his own mind. He squirmed, grimacing at the squelching feel of his sodden underpants, his back aching. “OK, if I’m not allowed to complain, then let’s talk about something constructive.” 

McCoy gritted his teeth. “One minute we’re at a diplomatic reception trying to be polite about avoiding the canapés, the next we’re coming to in a cage, waiting to be a human sacrifice-- a Vulcan sacrifice, too, fine, I’ll be inclusive,” he grumbled when Spock shifted, obviously preparing a protest. “Maybe we should’ve just eaten the damn canapés.”

“Dr. McCoy.” Spock managed to turn his head and fix him with one eye. “The _hors d’œuvres_ in question were alive and wriggling. While you may not find that philosophically as repugnant as I do, I assume you respect my preference to avoid eating any creature who does not survive the experience to enjoy it.”

McCoy halted his next planned words in mid-inhale, so fast he nearly choked. “...Was that a joke?” He paused. “A _dirty_ joke?”

“Yes, it was.” Even hunched over in the mud awaiting death, Spock made blandness into an art form. 

“You think we’re going to die. That’s the only thing that could possibly explain it.” McCoy glowered at Spock as well as he could, bent over and staring down at his own feet. “Either that, or Lieutenant Uhura has been a terrible influence on you.”

“The lieutenant would doubtless regard that assessment as a compliment.”

McCoy paused, trying to shove aside the inevitable mental image conjured up by Spock’s joke and the subsequent mention of Lieutenant Uhura. He grimaced. Damn, she really _had_ worked on him!

“That’s more than I needed to know about the exceptions to your vegetarianism, Mr. Spock.”

“My apologies, doctor.” He went from bland to bone dry in an instant.

“No, no.” McCoy attempted to be magnanimous, waving his hand with as much grandeur as he could manage, given his current pose. “I can endure a lot worse than that if it’ll pry the occasional flicker of humanity out of you.” He shot Spock a side-eye, but couldn’t tell if his barb hit home. 

The Vulcan remained uncharacteristically silent. 

“Sorry,” McCoy relented after a moment. 

“Not at all. I understand your attempts at humor are a mechanism intended to diffuse stress. As are my own.”

“Oh,” McCoy huffed, deflating a little. “Yeah, well. Good.”

“Am I making you uncomfortable, doctor?”

McCoy bit back the ‘yes’ quivering on the end of his tongue. Yeah, he’d been uncomfortable ever since the night Spock and Uhura broke up. And it wasn’t just from waking up alone in the commander’s quarters with a hangover and breakfast waiting. 

Spock’s reaction to Kirk’s challenge put McCoy on edge. He’d pursued his task with a will, making McCoy feel the unease of a coyote who’s been set to stalk a rabbit, but turns around and finds a bear on his tail.

He jerked his head to one side, suddenly deeply suspicious.

“What the hell are you up to, Spock?”

“Much the same as you, doctor. Attempting to escape this situation while preserving both our lives.”

McCoy scoffed, but he felt warmed in spite of himself. “That’s not what I meant.”

Spock raised a brow, or at least McCoy thought that was what he was doing. “You have not answered my initial question.”

“Of course you are.” McCoy flushed. “Every day since we met.” He paused. “Doesn’t mean anything. You have to get outside your comfort zone if you want to accomplish anything worthwhile.”

“Indeed.” Spock shifted. “I trust you will assist me should I have need, doctor.” He raised himself as far as he could, sliding his arm through a gap between the bars, and stretched, levering himself against the wet metal. 

McCoy winced. “Be careful, you’re going to dislocate that--”

“Indeed, doctor.” Spock’s face contorted slightly as he bent his shoulder past its natural angle of motion, but his fingers brushed the cage latch, caught it, and flipped it upward. He drew his arm back inside with the faintest hiss of pain. 

“Well let’s not waste it,” McCoy muttered, and together they scrambled out of the cage and fled into the cold rain. 

As the rain turned to sleet, McCoy could not stop thinking of comfort and discomfort, and of his chance of achieving anything other than aggravation if he asked Spock what was his favorite food before trying to pop that shoulder back into joint again. 

“How do they always know to take our communicators?” He muttered, shivering. “I’d like to know how the hell Jim’s supposed to find us-- or even know we’re missing.”

“He will, doctor.” Spock blinked icy rain out of his eyes, pushing aside a spray of vines and revealing a shallow depression cut into a cliff wall. It was a better shelter than the dripping boughs of trees, and the branches would conceal them from searchers. “Our job now is to endure and evade pursuit until we can be located and beamed aboard the Enterprise.”

“You’re probably going to suggest something logical, like sharing body heat.”

“There is no need for me to make such a sensible suggestion when you have already done so.” 

McCoy felt himself flush-- or he would have, if he hadn’t been halfway to hypothermia and red in the face already. He reached and set his hands on the arm Spock held stiffly to his side, unmoving. “What’s your favorite food?” He asked, and yanked abruptly.

Spock bared his teeth as the injured joint slid into place with a crackle. “That method of pain reduction does not work, doctor, as I believe we have already established.” His expression gave the lie to his calm voice. 

“Horse-shit,” McCoy told him agreeably, and bundled himself into the little alcove. 

After some argument they wound up curled face to face with Spock’s hands tucked under McCoy’s armpits and McCoy’s nestled embarrassingly between Spock’s thighs; since McCoy needed full function in his hands for surgery, he received the preferential placement. Spock would have it no other way. McCoy was just glad it was getting dark so he didn’t have to look the green blooded hobgoblin in the face while he sat there with both his hands firmly planted in an extremely personal and embarrassing location.

Neither seemed disposed to talk, and that was fine with McCoy, who spent his time trying to ignore his chattering teeth and the shudders wracking his body, his wet clothing leaching away precious heat. Hypothermia had a firm hold despite the warmth of Spock’s body against his, and he hated to think how much worse off the Vulcan might be-- though God forbid he admit he was suffering too; he sat stoically, unmoving, no doubt sunk in meditation.

It reminded him of the blistering, lung-parching heat of Spock’s quarters, and of his silent self-sacrifice in neglecting to tell Uhura that he suffered trying to sleep in temperatures comfortable for Terrans. It was just like the bastard to pretend he didn’t care, then go and pull a stunt like that-- or giving up his bed to someone who was trying to be a friend, or dislocating his shoulder to free them both, or warming McCoy’s hands at the expense of his own dignity because it was the logical thing to do. 

He blinked at the darkness and envisioned Spock’s face inches from his, as it had been when he awakened the Vulcan on Altamid. At least Spock wasn’t wounded this time. McCoy sighed. Even apart from the cold, it was impossible to rest. The tension of being so close sent an odd buzz of energy through him, keeping him wakeful and alert. McCoy frowned. It felt almost like a drug, though he hadn’t eaten or drunk anything. Maybe it was something in the air? In any case, it would not allow him to relax or grow numb. 

He couldn’t shake the memory that arose again and again in his mind, either-- Spock vulnerable, his face slack, his finely-cut lips sensual, relaxed in sleep, so still McCoy reached to touch his face in worry, almost afraid he had died quietly as he slept. How he had blinked awake, his eyes dark and deep, fixing on McCoy with slow-dawning comprehension, a moment of hazy vulnerability passing over his features before rationality fully returned. How he had smiled, then laughed…. Out of his mind with pain and blood loss, true, but had he ever done something like that where anyone else could see? Somehow McCoy didn’t think so. It was probably something they’d never, ever talk about, just like this moment between them right now. 

“Doctor.” Spock’s voice in his ear was soft. “You are thinking loudly enough I could hear you even if we were not in physical contact.”

_Jesus Christ._ “Sorry,” McCoy muttered, so flustered he blushed despite the cold. “I was only thinking how you’re mortal just like the rest of us.” He shivered. “That and trying to forget how I’m colder than a mortician’s mistress.”

Spock considered that one for a time; McCoy could feel steady, warm breath against his neck and cheek. 

“It’s a necrophilia joke, Spock.” McCoy managed to inject some of his old snap into the words. 

“Humanity never ceases to push the limits of good taste, doctor.”

That was the moment Jim chose to beam them up, and when he beheld them curled tightly together as they materialized on the transporter platform, he raised both brows in shock, and so did Scotty.

McCoy drew back with dignity, not quite managing to pull it off as well as Spock, who simply uncurled himself and stood up. He rolled to a sitting position right on the pad and jabbed an accusing finger at the captain as he took refuge in a full-on rant. “‘Calm down,’ you said. ‘No big deal,’ you said. ‘Stop whining,’ you said. ‘Routine mission. What could go wrong? Just shut up and enjoy it,’ you said,” he accused, his voice rising with every quotation. 

He could just barely make out the faint curving of Spock’s lips out of the corner of his eye. 

“Can we get a medical team down here?” Kirk slapped the comm, never taking his eyes off McCoy. “We’ve got a man down.”

McCoy hastily pulled himself upright. “I am not down!”

“We’ll let Dr. M’Benga be the judge of that.” Kirk paused. “For both of you. Captain’s orders, Mr. Spock!”

Spock, who had been trying to execute a swift end-run while Kirk was preoccupied, stopped just short of the door.

“Of course, sir.”

“And you’re not leaving sickbay until I’m satisfied that shoulder is going to be 100%,” McCoy told him with satisfaction.

Spock raised a brow at him and seemed almost about to smirk again. “If you desire my company so much, doctor, I am not currently in a position to argue.”


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Short one this time-- long one next time!

McCoy hoped Jim would make himself scarce, but after he'd passed his physical-- his hands in particular were fine, better than the rest of him-- and cleared Spock in turn, Jim was waiting for him in the corridor, leaning lazily against the bulkhead with a knowing smirk on his face.

McCoy felt himself prickle, puffing up with defensive irritation before Jim ever uttered a peep.

“So what went on down there?”

“Your precious aliens decided canapés were so important our failure to eat them was an offense punishable by death. What else?” He waved an arm back toward Sickbay. “Your first officer dislocated his arm getting us out of the cage before they pulled our guts out and served them up with corn bread, and we nearly froze to death before you figured it out and came after us, that’s what.”

“You and Spock looked pretty tight when we beamed you up.”

“Yeah, well, freezing to death’ll do that to you.” He scowled and plowed past the captain, hoping Jim would let him escape into his quarters.

“You two have been pretty tight for a while now.” Jim fell into step with him. “He told me what you were up to, by the way.”

“Did he, now?” McCoy scoffed. “I know you’re bluffing-- or he is, one of the two.”

“Actually no, I’m not.” Kirk grinned at him. “I don’t think Spock is, either. He told me what he’d turned up a couple of weeks ago, right after he broke up with Uhura. He said you obviously intended to become his friend.” Jim pushed the button to summon the turbolift.

“That cold-blooded, two-faced, low-down snake in the grass!” McCoy sputtered as the turbolift arrived and they stepped inside.

“If there’s a snake in the grass here, I don’t think it’s Spock.” Kirk rolled his eyes. “Strange way to go about being a guy’s buddy. Sitting in Ten Forward every night? I might almost think you were spying on him with his girlfriend.”

“Did he say that?!” McCoy realized he sounded guilty as hell.

“No. I said that.” Kirk bumped McCoy’s shoulder with his own, smirking. “I know you better than he does.” 

“What the hell do you think you’re implying?” He tried to keep the embarrassment out of his eyes, focusing on righteous indignation, but Jim could read him like a book. 

“That I think he’s wrong about what you want.” The lift sighed to a stop. 

“Well if you know so God-damned much, then what the hell did you sic him on me for?” McCoy changed his tactics, hoping to divert Jim’s laser focus, but it didn’t work. It never did.

“For my own personal amusement, Bones. Besides, I thought you needed the help.” Kirk keyed the entry pad of McCoy’s quarters and let himself in. 

“You’re out of your cotton-pickin’ mind.” Scowling, he stalked in behind the captain. 

“I don’t think so.” Kirk flopped onto McCoy’s couch and put his feet up on a pillow, still in his boots. 

“By all means, make yourself at home,” McCoy drawled, sarcastic.

“Don’t mind if I do. Got any alcohol?”

“Not for you.” He went to his stash, poured himself two fingers of whiskey, and tossed back the shot. 

Kirk just laughed at him. “Be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.”

“Spock’s so full of shit his eyes are brown. Hare-brained, the both of you. You’re just tryin’ to piss me off.” He poured another two fingers. 

Kirk reached and snatched the bottle off the desk, taking a swig right from the neck. “Looks like I succeeded.”

“Just for that I’m letting M’Benga handle all of Spock’s physical therapy,” McCoy huffed. “Gimme the bottle.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short one this time-- long one next time!


	6. Chapter 6

McCoy kept a low profile for a few days after that, interacting with Spock only when duty required or when Spock sought him out. He’d hardly noticed how much the Vulcan was hanging around until he stopped making an effort to seek his company. But Spock apparently felt no such constraint, and he kept up what had become his normal pattern of behavior.

McCoy didn’t resent it too much, making a fine show of nonchalance. But all his good intentions were wasted when they got to Irandia. 

“The planet of the pedants,” McCoy muttered to Jim, who only laughed at him. 

“Surely you can endure a little diplomacy every now and then, just as a break from lying around in the sleet with your hands tucked up someplace nice and warm.”

McCoy shot Kirk a glare that could have killed. “You’re pretty self-satisfied about spending the day suffocating in small talk. I think you’ve got the hots for that little blond lieutenant in the diplomatic corps,” Bones made the accusation as snide as he could; if Kirk was going to needle him over Spock, then he had no obligation to take it easy on his friend.

“Her professional credentials are definitely impressive, doctor.” Kirk twinkled at him, irrepressible.

McCoy snorted, deliberately rude. “She must have them tattooed on her chest and her behind, then, because that’s all you could stare at after you were introduced.”

“You’re just jealous because you couldn’t hit it yourself.”

“If I wanted to put the moves on that girl or any other one, I damn well would--” McCoy started hotly, then shut his mouth as the turbolift opened and Spock emerged, giving them a brief nod. 

“Morning, Spock,” Kirk greeted him easily. “Glad to have you along.”

Spock nodded and fell into step as they headed for the transporter platform.

The reception wasn’t the worst one McCoy had ever attended, but it had to be one of the top three since he joined Starfleet. The Irandians loved to hear themselves talk, but they couldn’t stick to the point if you held knives to their throats, either collectively or individually. Worst of all, they expected you to find them--

“Fascinating.” Spock’s tone cut through the murmur of the crowd, and McCoy could read that particular drawl like a book. He was bored out of his gourd. 

McCoy carefully maneuvered his plate of cake and glass of punch through the crowd, trying not to spill it on somebody and cause an interstellar incident-- or wind up in a cage again. 

“Mr. Spock. I hate to drag you away from the ambassador here, but I need to consult you on an official matter.” He flashed the Irandian his best charming grin as he cut in, deftly steering Spock out of the herd to a convenient corner, somehow managing to avoid spilling his punch.

Spock inclined his head, putting on an appropriately intent expression. “I assume there is no emergency?” he inquired, discreet.

“I saw a shipmate in dire need of rescue,” McCoy snorted. “That’s enough of an emergency for me.”

“Your consideration is appreciated.”

“Jim and I do it for each other all the time.” McCoy kept his voice low. “But not today; he found himself some company who was wearing a skirt that went all the way up to Christmas.”

“Indeed, the captain is taking advantage of a holiday. He left the reception with Lieutenant Morris some time ago.” Spock lifted a brow, his voice delicately wry. 

“Thinkin’ with his gonads again,” McCoy shook his head. “Let’s just hope he doesn’t get in over his head and wind up needing us to come pull his nuts out of the fire.”

“He does have a talent for finding trouble.” Spock agreed. “But I am not sure why you believe he would place his genitals in such an uncomfortable environment.”

McCoy rolled his eyes. “I think all the vital discussions here are well in hand and don’t need us to keep them going. Don’t you?” He started walking, angling them subtly toward the exit.

“I cannot think of a way the negotiations will benefit from my listening to further information regarding Irandian cranial depilation,” Spock admitted, strolling idly at his side and regarding the buffet as if considering his next choice of light refreshment. 

McCoy glanced briefly aside at Mr. Scott, who stood next to Keenser, the both of them staring at a diplomatic attaché. The Irandian waved his arms wildly to illustrate a point, and the two of them wore identical expressions of baffled dismay as they watched.

“There seems to be an adequate number of crew remaining to ensure diplomatic interaction will continue,” Spock decided. “I note that the Irandian high councilors have also departed.”

“Then maybe you’d care to accompany me to the ship’s biology lab. I have an experiment that needs watching.”

“Would your experiment involve cultured bacteria from the quadrotriticale mash Mr. Scott is currently experimenting with in his illicit engine room distillery?”

“Spock, on Earth we have a saying: ‘see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.’” McCoy ushered him from the room with a gallant flourish. “You should try it sometime.”

*****

Two hours later, the inevitable comm call came in: Jim was on his way from Transporter three to have a black eye and some scratches patched up. It seemed Lieutenant Morris had a jealous ex in the diplomatic corps, one who had elected to pursue aggressive negotiations with the Enterprise captain in the form of fisticuffs.

Bones raised an eyebrow, then his glass, at Spock. “To the captain’s nuts,” he said, and drained the last of his single shot of whiskey.

“Indeed, doctor.”

“Wanna come along and help me give him hell?”

“By all means.”

*****

“I’m a doctor, not an ambassador.” 

“Tonight we’re all ambassadors, Bones. So shut up and put on your dress uniform.” Jim looked insufferably smug, and once again he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

McCoy supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised that Jim had begun assigning both him and Spock to every miserable, drawn-out, deathly dull diplomatic function that came down the pike. Not after both he and Spock were waiting to greet him when he arrived in sickbay with not one but two shiners and a nasty cut over his left eye that had bled all over both his face and uniform shirt. It was nothing a protoplaser couldn’t fix-- except for the shirt, which was a total loss (which was not only dripping with blood, but had ripped, as usual, as if it wanted to show off Jim’s pecs).

McCoy was usually pretty good at diplomacy, even if he hated it, but tonight wasn’t going well. It wasn’t that the Ppokrians weren’t pretty. Both genders were very attractive by humanoid standards, about five feet tall and willowy slim with warm pale-brown skin, platinum white hair, huge violet eyes, and heart-shaped faces, with no apparent secondary sexual characteristics differentiating the men and women. They looked like they’d walked right out of a classic anime series or something. 

That wasn’t the problem. The problem was they found Terrans absolutely irresistible, and McCoy was one of only half a dozen humans at the reception, where he found himself outnumbered roughly twenty to one. They liked his accent, too, so he’d received more than his fair share of advances. Not usually a problem, but the Ppokrian Grand Vizier seemed especially determined, and refused to take no for an answer.

McCoy couldn’t tell if the vizier was male or female, and frankly he didn’t give a damn. He wasn’t going to dance with someone that rude and aggressive-- neither vertical dancing nor the horizontal kind. On the other side of the dance floor, it looked like Jim was paying court to about six of them at once, and McCoy winced, hoping this planet didn’t have any sneaky STDs Federation medicine wasn’t prepared to cope with.

“I have brought you some Ppokrian _ch’iwa_ ,” the vizier spoke unexpectedly, appearing at McCoy’s elbow with a glass of something that looked dangerous: it fizzed and steamed, and McCoy wondered if it was eating its way through the glass that contained it. “It is a much-loved delicacy among our people. Will you toast with me?”

McCoy tried to smile, though he knew it came out more like a grimace. The mission briefing materials had taken particular care to warn that _ch’iwa_ acted as an aphrodisiac on Terran physiology-- not to mention it was about twice as potent as it looked.

“No thank you. I’m fine without. I ate too much of that fine dinner earlier, if you want to know the truth.” 

The vizier gave him a pout and vanished, no doubt retreating to come up with a new strategy. McCoy tossed a desperate glance around himself, but he couldn’t locate a door. Maybe there actually wasn’t one; the entire party had beamed down into this room, and there was no sign of either window or portal breaking the smoothness of any of the walls.

Through the crowd he could glimpse the Ppokrian vizier extracting blossoms from one of the bouquets on the buffet, and he groaned aloud. He glanced around for help but everyone he could see was an island surrounded by a mass of Ppokrians at least four deep. In the vizier’s absence some were starting to drift away from other groups to converge on him, hopeful looks on their faces.

The vizier forestalled them, appearing with a spray of wildly colored exotic orchids in one hand, their bare stems still dripping. “Rare and beautiful flowers for the most exotic and beautiful of our visitors here tonight,” the vizier announced loudly, and presented them with a bow. McCoy, mortified by all the eyes that turned on him, tried to think of a graceful way to refuse the flowers, but there didn’t seem to be one. He took the soggy handful with an insincere smile. He could just see Jim out of the corner of his eye; the captain looked like he was about to rupture something choking down a laugh.

“Thank you. Very lovely. Your planet has magnificent flora.” He sniffed them in desperation, but couldn’t smell anything. Sudden inspiration struck, and he handed them back. “Would you put them in water for me?” 

The vizier handed them off to a random partygoer with a huff.

“If flowers and drink do not please you, then perhaps you will honor me with the next dance.”

Spock appeared out of nowhere, with polished manners and grace and a possessive hand that settled just over McCoy’s sacrum, burning heat into him like a brand, stirring unexpected heat at the base of his belly. “I beg your pardon, Grand Vizier, but my partner and I have pledged we will only dance with one another.”

McCoy nearly shied right out of his skin, startlement battling arousal. After a bad start out of the gate, relief caught them up and won by a nose. He leaned against Spock’s side with all possible speed, sliding an arm around his waist. “There you are, darlin’. He went to take a powder,” McCoy explained to the vizier, whose face pinched in a sullen pout. 

Partner? The word tried to hammer itself through McCoy’s ears into his brain, which unfortunately was busy elsewhere, trying to forestall a diplomatic meltdown. “But thank you for the flowers and the drink. They were very nice. I’m sure Captain Kirk would love them.”

The vizier brightened at that and darted away, leaving McCoy and Spock together. It was then that the word ‘partner’ penetrated McCoy’s panic and sent it into overdrive.

“Partner?”

“For this dance, at least,” Spock said, dry. “Shall we?”

“Thanks for the rescue,” McCoy muttered lamely, only a few moments later than he should have, as they stepped onto the floor. Numerous couples milled and twirled to the strains of alien music that adequately approximated a waltz, at least in speed if not in melody and rhythm. That hand on his back wasn’t moving, and its proximity to his ass was electric, to say the least.

“What sort of powder was I supposed to take, and why would I want to take it?” Spock responded with a small frown, positioning them efficiently for waltzing.

Diplomatically, McCoy decided not to explain the phrase’s possible etymological link to being given a prescription for a laxative.

“Talcum powder, so your face doesn’t get shiny.” He smirked, unable to help himself, as he imagined Spock patting powder onto his nose. “It’s also a polite euphemism for ladies to use if they have to leave their date to go urinate, Spock. A lady doesn’t just up and say ‘I have to go piss’ when she’s trying to impress a man.”

“There do not appear to be any restroom facilities in this banqueting hall, doctor.”

“I knew these people were crazy.”

Spock began to move-- he was leading, the bastard-- and McCoy had no option but to follow. It wasn’t his first formal dance, not by a long shot. That had been a million years ago in Atlanta at a debutante ball. There had been lemonade, inadequate air conditioning, more dainty, sweaty pastel frocks than you could shake a stick at, and this same bright flare of unreasoning panic at the feeling of a warm waist and shoulder under his hands. 

McCoy swallowed hard, his throat dry. He could still remember petite, blonde Allison Buchanan looking up at him out of crystal blue eyes-- parting her lips in a seductive invitation, nowhere near as scared as he was. Damned cotillion. 

But it had been good training. The eyes that looked at him now didn’t look up, and they were the deepest brown-and-sable he could ever recall seeing, but his feet remembered the steps and moved gracefully in time with Spock’s in spite of the lack of 3/4 rhythm to guide him. 

McCoy could feel that odd buzzing he’d noticed a couple of times before when he was close to Spock, but this time he wasn’t freezing to death, and the adrenaline from his moment of panic was already subsiding, so it couldn’t be causing the strange sense of being plugged in somehow. And he hadn’t had any of the drink, so that wasn’t it.

He eyed Spock with sudden suspicion.

“Is that you?”

“Is what me?” Spock guided him deftly away from a couple that intruded in their path. His hand was warm and firm. The heat of him was intoxicating, making McCoy feel strangely dizzy and threatening to distract him from his thoughts, but he was too much of a bulldog to let them go that easily.

“That buzz in my head.” He considered. “Like a speaker with the wire not plugged in right; it’s not transmitting any sound, but I can hear it. Feel it. I know it’s there.”

Spock considered for a moment. “An interesting analogy. I believe it is, yes.”

McCoy narrowed his eyes. “What is it? Why do I feel it whenever we’re close together?”

It was Spock’s turn to look uncomfortable. “It is my telepathic capacity, doctor. We are in close proximity, and I am a touch telepath. I am not ‘transmitting,’ as you put it, which is doubtless why you likened the sensation to a speaker that makes no sound.”

“But I am, and you can hear it.” McCoy had to fight the urge to pull away. “I don’t know how not to.”

“Humans are not routinely trained in telepathic shielding, no. But I am accustomed to that, and can create a shield of my own.”

“Have you?”

Spock hesitated for the merest moment, and the buzz lessened, nearly vanishing. “A shield is currently in place.”

“But it wasn’t two seconds ago, was it.” McCoy knew he was right, and a bright rage born of extreme embarrassment blossomed in his chest: Spock had felt both his arousal and his panic. “God damn it, Spock, you’re a fucking voyeur!”

“My sincere apologies, Leonard.”

“Oh, it’s a fine time to pull that one out of your bag of tricks!” McCoy dithered, but the anger offered a pathway out, familiar and easy.

“Do you wish the Ppokrians to realize we are having a quarrel, doctor?” Spock’s voice fell, endeavoring to soothe and remain discreet.

“Damn right I do.” McCoy pulled himself away and fumbled out his communicator. “Scotty, beam me out of here on the double. I have to take a powder,” he spat, and for once, he welcomed the swirling lights and the nausea that claimed him and dragged him away from those dark, dismayed eyes.


	7. Chapter 7

McCoy sat locked in his office with only Bob the lizard for company, making a spirited attempt to get to the bottom of an entire bottle of Saurian brandy. Spirited? He snorted at himself and glared into his glass. 

The door hissed, but he didn’t look up. Only one other person on the Enterprise could override the security lock he invoked whenever he holed up in here to drink himself into the next best thing to a coma, and it wasn’t Spock. 

“The fuck happened down there?” Jim, direct as usual, flopped in the chair across the desk and reached for the brandy.

“Your fucking science officer’s been skimming through my mind like it was his own private amusement park!” Bones spat the words with considerable venom, managing not to slur too badly to be understood. 

“So I’m given to understand.” Kirk met his blowtorch glare, somehow without curling up at the edges and withering away. 

“Then you knew, and you enabled him anyway?”

“I didn’t know he’d been doing that, no. Not till he came to me a little while ago and ‘fessed up.” Kirk eyed the bottle, obviously considering whether it was worth it to try to appropriate a second swig. “Asked me to take him into criminal custody, in fact.”

“Did you?”

“Not yet. That kind of thing ought to be based on a formal accusation. He’s confined himself to quarters pending notification of your intent to press charges.”

McCoy grudgingly surrendered the bottle. “Green-blooded telepathic sonofabitch. Also, he’s a dirty rotten sneak.”

“All technically within the realm of truth or at least possibility,” Kirk admitted, “Though I wouldn’t say anything nasty to him about his mother, if I were you. Did you ask him why he did it?”

“....No.” McCoy glowered at Jim with deep mistrust. 

“Maybe you should.” Jim drank again.

The fucking bottle was empty, and McCoy knew he lacked the manual dexterity to tackle his safe to get another one. 

“So. You gonna press those charges?”

“Too drunk to decide,” McCoy hedged. Let the fucking evil elf _sweat_ a while.

Kirk stood up and went to the cabinet, rummaging around for a few moments before making a noise of satisfaction. 

“I always wanted to do this,” he admitted, then struck like a snake, pushing a hypo against McCoy’s throat and pressing the trigger.

“Ouch, goddammit, not in the larynx!” McCoy’s magnificent drunk began to recede, taking blissful numbness with it. “You’re not licensed to do that; you could’ve shot me up with anything at all!”

“It was lying in a box labeled ‘sober-all,’” Jim displayed the hypo without repentance. “You’ve used worse on me at least half a dozen times.”

“Maybe it’s you who’s the sonofabitch, ever think of that?”

“You can take that up with my mother the next time you visit the homestead.” 

McCoy scowled.

“You know,” Jim seated himself again, toying with the empty hypospray, “the Federation’s finding dozens of new races with abilities humans don’t share. There’s plenty of legal gray area to go around. We’ve got one species on the first-contact shortlist with telepathic abilities even stronger than Spock’s: they’re called Beta-something. They can read people’s feelings over a distance without having to touch them first. Can you imagine the tactical advantage of having one of those people sitting in the center seat, able to tell when an enemy is lying? Or the medical advantages of having a CMO who already knows the exact mental state of all his patients, where their pain is, and how bad? Or having a ship’s counselor who knows if the patient is repressing emotions, even if the patient isn’t aware of it?”

McCoy scowled. “Sounds like a God-damned abomination.”

“A pretty damn beneficial abomination, if you ask me.” Jim slouched comfortably. “I think we’ll see those people joining Starfleet crews in our lifetime, Bones. Is what Spock did any worse than that? They’re going to be commonplace. Should all the people they come in contact with have the right to press charges against them for psychic intrusion?”

“It’s like the fucking atomic bomb!” Bones slapped his desk, furious. “Anything that damned useful comes with infinite potential for abuse!”

“Laws will have to change to account for that,” Jim conceded. Sometimes trying to argue with him was like pushing on a rope; the goal you were trying to reach shifted so often and so easily you never actually got there. McCoy sat still, breathing hard, trying to regroup and hold onto his anger.

“So. Charges or no charges?” Jim prompted. 

“The statute of limitations on bringing charges of mental invasion is at least three years,” McCoy hedged, refusing to surrender.

“That means you aren’t. I’ll tell him he can go about his duties. He won’t do it again, Bones.” Jim paused at the door. “If that’s what you want.”

McCoy snarled at him without answering.

“I need my first officer and chief medical officer back on speaking terms, doctor.” Jim eyed him, deciding how far to push his luck. “I won’t have a lovers’ tiff intruding on my bridge. Tomorrow I want business as usual. That’s an order.”

The empty bottle shattered on the door just as it slid shut, unfortunately missing him entirely.

 _Lovers’ tiff?_ McCoy snarled at the words, which might as well be hanging in the air in fluffy letters of neon pink. “I don’t get paid enough to put up with either of you,” he yelled after Jim, and went to the safe for that second bottle. 

*****

McCoy did what Jim said; he was ready to work with Spock the next day (even though he had the mother of all hangovers. He didn’t want to pile too many doses of sober-all on top of each other, and after drinking about a bottle and a half of Saurian brandy in a six hour period, he figured he probably deserved to suffer).

As luck would have it, he didn’t have to suffer more than a headache. He saw Spock across the bridge once, but that was it. The Vulcan kept his back carefully turned as McCoy delivered his reports, and McCoy didn’t hang around to tempt fate. 

They managed to avoid each other for most of a month. By that time the entire crew seemed to know something happened on Ppokria, and to have come to more or less the same conclusion Jim had about the matter. Every time McCoy found himself near Lt. Uhura, he thought she was going to explode; she kept taking deep breaths as if she intended to speak her mind in a rush, then letting them out in a frustrated hiss and chewing her lip instead, until she eventually flounced off in some other direction than the one he was going. 

He felt like a failure every time she turned up and reminded him he’d left Spock to go it alone just the way she had. He wondered what she thought about Spock and all the damn mind-reading. _Doesn’t much matter. At least **she** managed to get laid before she dumped him_ , a quiet voice whispered in his head. He shut it up with lots of hard work; it didn’t do to get shit-faced drunk every night just because you didn’t want to face your problems. 

Never mind the Spock-shaped hole that had suddenly appeared in his life, surprisingly large and distinctly empty. He’d been living with emptiness ever since the day Jocelyn walked out with Joanna, and he’d got pretty good at bridging the gaps by now.

The one thing he couldn’t manage were the dreams. Just like he used to wake up in a sweat after searching the house a thousand times over, unable to find his daughter, now he woke up nightly from dreams where Spock was missing and couldn’t be found, or wounded on a mission and McCoy couldn’t save him no matter what he tried. Or, worse, from feverish dreams where Spock’s long, elegant hands and warm lips wandered all over him and he woke up with a mess in his undershorts and a cry strangled in his throat. God _damn_ it.

His problem walked into sickbay at approximately 0900 hours one morning a month later, presenting himself for his annual physical despite the bargain he’d struck and the bet he’d won. 

Maybe it was supposed to be some sort of peace offering.

McCoy wasn’t having any of it. 

“M’Benga, one for you,” McCoy directed shortly. “Chapel, you assist. I need to run these case studies through the computer for correlation. We’re finding too many squamous cell carcinomas on the folks down in Engineering. I’ve been telling Scotty for weeks; something’s still not right with the radiation shielding.” He beat a strategic retreat into his office and dove headlong into statistical analysis, hoping to figure out where the weak spot was. 

The door whisked open while he was still neck deep in setting up his modeling program; he gestured distractedly to the desk, expecting Chapel to deposit her report on Spock’s condition there and leave him alone. 

But when he turned around to find the folder, a single small item lay on his desk instead. Closer inspection revealed a small round chocolate truffle from Lindt, wrapped in elegant red and gold cellophane.

McCoy’s fingers didn’t tremble when they picked it up. They _didn’t._

*****

Spock’s quarters were hot and dark, the only visible light a dim red flicker from the flame set in the belly of his fire idol or whatever it was. Still, he was in there-- he’d just answered his door. 

McCoy stepped in, nervousness fluttering madly in the pit of his belly, and let the door close behind him. Slowly his eyes adapted to the dark, and he gradually made out a darker shadow than the others: Spock knelt there in meditation, wearing some kind of black wrap with silver-gray embroidery down the right breast. He was still, but McCoy knew he was alert, waiting for McCoy to speak the first words.

“Jim says I ought to ask you why you did it.” The pause that followed grew uncomfortable. “So I’m asking,” he blustered, and folded his arms over his chest. 

“Perhaps a better question would be when, or even where.” Spock responded, his voice very quiet. “I first made contact with your mind on Altamid, doctor. The incident occurred when you touched my face to wake me.” 

McCoy winced. The Vulcan had been out of his mind then; couldn’t be held responsible for his actions.

“You are familiar with Vulcan anatomy, I trust, but perhaps not so much with its telepathic aspects.” Spock sounded even more stiff than normal, which meant he was deeply uncomfortable. “There are a number of telepathic access points in the hands, but there are also three on the face, doctor. While the hands are frequently used for public demonstrations of affection or friendship, the facial contacts are traditionally used for deeper, more intimate connection.”

McCoy swallowed hard. He’d put his hands all over Spock’s face, and he remembered it well: the way his fingers had splayed over the warm skin, seeking signs of life; the way Spock’s eyes immediately fluttered open, confused. His own worry and relief. Spock’s unaccustomed emotional outburst. Shit.

“I’m sorry,” he blurted. “I didn’t know.”

“I am aware of your lack of knowledge, and your apology is accepted. Yet I should tell you a lasting link formed at that moment, without my intent. It has proved unusually durable, perhaps thanks to a number of factors.” Spock never moved, his voice as dark and rich as chocolate. 

“The most significant factor likely involves the recent demise of my home world. Vulcan children of traditional families are frequently betrothed at a young age, doctor. I was no exception. When I reached puberty, my father took me to a ritual shrine where I met my betrothed, a young female of good family and intellect. We laid our hands upon one another’s faces and undertook a ritual that created a permanent telepathic linkage between us, to be confirmed upon our eventual consummation of the marriage. When Vulcan perished, T’Pring was lost, and that connection was lost with her.” 

Spock paused for a moment, as if considering what else to say. “That event has a number of ramifications for my physical and emotional health, but the only one relevant to you is that the relatively new, raw void in my mind, the absence of my link to her, resulted in a craving for the fulfillment of telepathic contact. In my impaired state, my shields were low. Your sincere friendship and deep concern transmitted itself to me, and I responded. The link formed between us quite without my conscious volition.”

“Why didn’t you just link up with Lieutenant Uhura?” McCoy could have cursed himself after he spoke; that had to be a sore subject.

Spock sighed, just audible. “My relationship with the lieutenant was frequently a stormy one, doctor. The needs in her psyche and my ability to provide for them were not ideally matched. I delayed forming a link with her at first because my pain over the loss of Vulcan and all that went with it was too intense to subject her to, and also because my mind had been injured by the involuntary dissolution of the marriage bond with T’Pring. Later, I abstained in order to give her the option to retain her freedom. I never found myself in a circumstance where I was unable to control my instinct to link with her as I would to a lifemate.”

 _A mate. A mate. He said a **FUCKING LIFEMATE.**_ McCoy’s brain began to yammer in panic. 

“Is that what our link is? A link… for life?” He managed to keep most of the squeak out of it. _To a **mate**?_ He didn’t quite dare ask.

“I have formed a number of links during my life, doctor, several of which are still extant. One is to my father. Another is to Jim. One is to you,” Spock responded, which wasn’t quite what McCoy had asked, and he was sharp enough at semantics to spot the evasive answer. “Ours is as yet in its initial stages. Yet it formed as I perceived you, too, had lost a lifemate, and saw an emptiness in you similar to my own. In my weakened condition, I may have instinctively assumed we would be ideally matched to fulfill one another in that way.”

McCoy felt like his mind was exploding, fragments whizzing off in a thousand tangential trajectories. How much of McCoy’s mind did Spock know? Had he actually had a thought of his own since Altamid? Had his decision to befriend Spock come from his own altruism, or had he been Spock’s unwitting puppet? How much of this did Jim know, damn him?

Spock plowed on, dogged. “I did not mention the link at the time because it seemed of little consequence. I assumed it would fade or develop laterally, becoming similar to the friendship bond I share with Jim. Yet during the interval since Altamid, our telepathic link has strengthened more than expected, and it has evolved to reveal additional elements of both friendship and sexual attraction.”

McCoy squirmed, uncomfortable. “Yeah, well, human sexual organs and hormones are notoriously unreliable indicators of actual social and romantic compatibility.” _Listen to this. We sound like a graduate biology seminar textbook on abnormal xenosexual entanglements,_ McCoy thought gloomily. _Time was I’d’ve sworn I’d wind up writing that textbook about **Jim** , not about **me!**_

Spock sighed aloud again. “These concepts are very cumbersome and unconvincing in words, doctor. It would be far easier to make myself understood if you would allow me to share my thoughts.”

McCoy backed up instinctively, feeling the door near behind him. 

Spock perceived his nervous gesture and attempted to reassure him. “Doctor. One of your primary objections, according to Jim’s speculation, is that I know the state of your mind, but you do not know mine. This would allow me to redress that imbalance. I will endeavor not to violate your privacy any further as I give you access to my own consciousness.”

“Won’t additional contact make the link even stronger?” McCoy hesitated, suspicious. 

“We would already require a Vulcan mind-healer to sever the link in its current form,” Spock sounded sheepish, if that was even possible. “I am willing to request leave at once, should you desire severance to take place, but I hope you will give me the chance to restore balance between us before choosing that alternative.”

“Then let’s get this over with,” McCoy blustered, trying to ignore the pounding heartbeat that rose so high in his throat it threatened to choke him. 

Spock stepped close slowly, half his face lit faintly by the dim red light. The glow made him appear hellish, almost demonic; McCoy caught himself swallowing hard, struggling to suppress his fight or flight instinct. 

Spock’s hand brushed his, unimaginably delicate, fingers trailing briefly along his-- warm and very gentle, but without the buzz he had come to associate with telepathic contact. The hand rose slowly, time seeming to stretch in the still, hot air. 

“Are you prepared?” The voice seemed to resonate strangely in the small room. “Breathe deeply and concentrate your focus on your breathing.”

McCoy obeyed instinctively, the rhythm of deep breathing calming him slowly. Spock gave him the time he needed, breathing in unison with him. Then fingertips, like points of fire, settled almost tenderly on his face, and McCoy forgot to breathe. But it was all right, because he could feel Spock breathing, and their chests rose and fell together.

“My mind to your mind.” The voice was inside him now, thrumming in his head. “My thoughts to your thoughts.”

It came in a gentle rush, like warm water flowing in to fill a basin: a sense of Spock, familiar and alien at once, a paradox of cool reason and quiet banked intensity, with sensations thrumming against McCoy’s mind that he did not know how to classify. He swayed, nearly overcome-- the red light smelled of dark, bitter chocolate, and the sound of their mingled breath and tandem heartbeat tasted of whiskey. 

Spock appeared before him, ready to guide him forward. “I am sorry I intruded in your mind without consent,” he said, his voice soft. “Please understand, I do not mock your lack of telepathic control. Nor do I scorn your feelings. At times I envy them. To feel without shame is a great freedom and a great honesty-- which I am denied.” He waited for a moment. “The French on Earth have a relevant saying: _‘Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner.’_ ” He held out his hand. “Perhaps it will apply in this case. Will you come into my thoughts, that you may understand?”

McCoy swallowed hard. Reaching out, he accepted. 

The sounds of language appeared in his mind, and though he did not know the words, their meaning filled him without effort. His mind fluttered, trying to make sense of the stimuli that filled it; a vision of Spock suddenly appeared before him, still lit in red, but the light had grown strong enough McCoy could see all his features. They stood on a wide plain, but about them stood a low ridge of gravel and boulders that screened the dusty wind. Leathery trees with thorns and small tough leaves thrust their twisted roots into the ground; they reminded McCoy of acacia. Water trickled nearby despite the heat, and he thirsted for it.

“ _Ashaya_ ,” Spock whispered. His voice deepened. “ _Aitlun_.” A strange rush of feeling blew through McCoy as the words echoed in his consciousness. _Loved. Desired._ The things he had once told Spock he didn’t need to say…. He thought the touch upon his face had merged with his own flesh; he could no longer tell which body or mind belonged to him. “ _T’hai’la_ ,” Spock breathed, and McCoy fell to his knees, plunging his hands into the blood-warm freshet. 

It was thick and rich, made of knowledge, made of Spock, made of McCoy, and the knowledge seemed old as time, but was fresh and new to this human half of himself: Spock’s arguments with Uhura had brought only harm and pain, but those with McCoy were different. They were battle between brothers training, striving, without true rancor: the yin and yang of heart and brain balancing one another, exposing weakness and providing perspective, so that the unknown, the other, might balance him and become his strength.

The palm of that hot hand settled on his face, and he saw T’Pring; he heard the words that they had spoken: _parted from me and never parted. Never and always touching and touched._ Then the tearing pain when that bond had ripped away, never to be touched again-- indistinguishable from the panic, the sinking nausea, and the anguish when every room in the house was empty, Joanna’s cradle silent, her favorite pillow and blanket missing, Jocelyn’s suitcase an empty slot in the closet, her makeup gone from the master bath.

Two hands on his face-- the pain soothed, the emptiness filled. Eyes of sable and darkest chocolate reflected the red desert sun. McCoy knelt in wet sand, arms sunk in water, drowned in mud to the elbows, and Spock knelt in the oasis with him, clasping his face, whispering a litany of understanding that his own lips shaped.

He lifted his chin and scented passion-- hot and strange as the dull red sun overhead, burning with the pulse of the flame in the idol’s belly, potent as liquid fire poured from the secret entrails of Vulcan herself. He gasped, head tipping back, and unexpectedly he was alone in himself again, Spock’s long, slender hands sliding from his face, the Vulcan’s eyes visible as dark, bottomless pools inches from his face. 

“Leonard,” Spock murmured, and narrow, warm lips covered his, opening his mouth with a sensual assurance McCoy would never have guessed Spock possessed. He lost himself to the kiss, to the firm, solid hand behind his neck, to the faintly coppery taste of the Vulcan’s tongue sweeping slowly through his mouth, claiming him-- and to his own stunned response blossoming with abrupt eagerness, opening to welcome Spock, dragging him close, fingers knotting in the thin silk tunic that covered his powerful shoulders.

Spock withdrew slowly, leaving him wanting; his fingers trailed down McCoy’s arm and stroked briefly at his hand, the tips of two of them sliding along his forefingers, brushing his mind with a tease of that impossible intimacy, the drugging, addictive knowledge of Spock’s desire.

Then Spock was gone, withdrawing with decorum, folding his arms and bowing his head. 

“Thank you,” he said formally. “I will abide by your choice.”

McCoy touched his lips, hesitant, feeling as if he had awoken suddenly from deep sleep only to find himself occupying a different reality, perhaps even a different body, than the one in which he had lain down. 

“You may feel disoriented,” Spock said. “It will pass.”

It might, at that. It could pass quickly, leaving only the faintest haze of surreal memory. Like a will-o-the-wisp, so tenuous it couldn’t sustain the scrutiny of everyday mundane reality. He could go back to Sickbay; he could sit there and chatter over trivial gossip with Chapel and M’Benga. He could argue with Jim and deliver reports to the bridge and drink so much whiskey he forgot the savor of good Swiss chocolate melting on his tongue. 

He could even go with Spock and humor him by sitting through some mystical mumbo jumbo in some mountain temple somewhere on New Vulcan, trying to make nice with a sour-faced, leathery old dowager who thought humans and their disgusting emotions were only one step above vermin and whose high, sharp cheekbones looked like they could cut diamond. Then he could come back to the Enterprise and keep sniping at Spock, and Spock would snipe back, and they would both be very, very careful never to touch one another again.

Or he could give himself. 

“I appreciate the consideration.” His voice sounded unexpectedly harsh, croaking like a crow, his throat bone dry. He hesitated, palms against the smoothness of the door, which felt pleasantly cool in comparison to the desert heat of the air. Moved by a moment of embarrassed tenderness, he pulled away from the wall, stepped forward, and set shy fingertips against Spock’s chest. 

They stood there together for a moment, very still, before he stepped back slowly, knowing it would be very easy to forget prudence and caution and reach out to break through that thin, thin shell to get at the volcano and everything else he’d sensed inside.

But that was what Uhura had done when Spock was lost and vulnerable, when he wasn’t really ready. Maybe she wasn’t, either. She hadn’t meant it to turn out that way, but it hadn’t worked. This time had to be different. It had to be… well, it had to make sense, for fucksake. 

“I need some time to get used to this,” he tried to explain, and Spock inclined his head, the barest fraction of a nod. 

“I will give you as much as I can,” he answered, and it didn’t seem strange, not in that moment. 

No, it didn’t seem strange at all, not until McCoy was out in the corridor again, sweat cooling on his cheeks. The everyday mundane reality of the Enterprise whispered normalcy, trying to tell him he’d imagined everything that just happened, plain metallic bulkhead and shiny aluminum solid and real and comforting.

But that last phrase kept right on nagging at him. He paused, turning to frown at Spock’s door. “What the hell did he mean by that?” McCoy whispered, but the door offered no answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner: (French) -_ To understand all is to forgive all  
>  _Ashaya: (Vulcan) -_ Love  
>  _Aitlun: (Vulcan) -_ Desire  
>  _T’hai’la: (Vulcan) -_ Friend, lover, life-long companion


	8. Chapter 8

When the time rolled around Jim arrived in sickbay for his physical, too, and McCoy had to wonder exactly what Spock had done to coerce him into abandoning his winnings. 

He submitted to being poked and prodded with ill-grace, grumbling at the requisite times, but McCoy could tell he had something on his mind. Being Jim Kirk, he chose the middle of his prostate exam as the opportune time to bring it up. Or maybe he was just desperate for a distraction; McCoy wasn’t trusting the instruments this time, and insisted on a digital exam. Of course it didn’t have anything at all to do with him being pissed off at Jim-- well, maybe not much. He didn’t trust machines as far as he could throw them.

“Bones, is there a reason you know of that Mr. Spock asked me to assure him that, if an emergency arises, I can divert and deliver him to New Vulcan at any time during our mission, within a maximum of five days?” Captain Kirk raised a brow at McCoy a few days later, sounding exceptionally put out.

McCoy sighed, but he was touched anyway. “Keep your pants on, Jim. No, don’t; that was a figure of speech. I’m not done with you yet.” He reached for a tube of lubricant. He appreciated Spock’s consideration, but breaking the link wasn’t all that urgent, even if he decided he wanted it done. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t need to ask.”

Pants around his ankles, Kirk paused just a fraction too long, grimacing. “Well, that’s good to know,” he said, his voice dry. “But I suppose it’s just as well. I don’t want to know anything else about it.”

M’Benga gazed at them both, impassive, then drew the privacy screen.

When Kirk vanished to clean up and dress, M’Benga was still in Sickbay. He glanced at McCoy, studying him a little oddly, perhaps. 

“You’re a kind man, doctor. A good friend,” he said softly. “Would you like to review my personal research materials on Vulcan biology? It’s not much, but I learned a good deal more during my time working there than you’ll find in any medical databases.”

“Sure, send it over,” McCoy said. Any insight into Spock’s medical needs was welcome; the bastard’s insides might as well have been designed by a committee. And if it gave a little insight into his love life, well. That was even better.

By the time Jim was back in his uniform and repossessed of his battered dignity, it was time for McCoy’s shift to be over. He went into his office, half surprised to find a physical file waiting on his desk from M’Benga, not the email he’d been expecting. 

Spock’s gift of chocolate still sat there too, and McCoy picked it up, crinkling the cellophane. The round brown ball inside had a plug to seal the shell and a little dimple opposite the plug where it had rested to be filled. He wondered what he’d find inside. 

No sound alerted him, he was certain of that, but nonetheless he knew Spock had appeared in his doorway and was watching him examine the chocolate. He knew Spock knew McCoy was aware he was there, too-- was that the link? Probably-- and was waiting to see what he would do or say.

McCoy bit into the chocolate, taking half. The shell broke, ever so slightly harder than the soft ganache inside. Flavor spread over his tongue: milk chocolate and hazelnuts, a _gianduia_. One of his favorites. He closed his eyes and let it melt on his tongue. 

“Want the other half?” He held it up and Spock approached to accept, still noiseless as a cat. He palmed the door to make it close behind him.

Incredibly, he did not reach to take the chocolate, but bent to take it with his mouth. McCoy stared, stunned, as Spock’s tongue darted out to pillow the chocolate and his lips closed around McCoy’s chocolate-smeared fingers.

He didn’t leave any, eyes seeking McCoy’s. 

“‘I’m sure that little stunt was imminently logical,” McCoy managed, shaky.

“Indeed. I preferred not to soil my fingers.” He straightened, both hands folded behind his back, absolutely composed. McCoy shook his head in disbelief. 

“I have procured whiskey truffles and brandied cherries if you would care to partake; they are waiting in my quarters,” Spock announced blandly. “Mr. Keenser and Mr. Scott responded positively to my suggestion that they remove their distillery before it was officially located.”

“You evil sonofaVulcan.” McCoy eyed him with admiration. “They won’t shut it down, you know.”

“Indeed. Perhaps I may find myself in a position to do business with them again.”

“You’re worse than a revenuer.”

“If you refer to a particular type of treasury official who once attempted to locate and close down production and distribution of illegal alcohol in the rural South, your analogy is apt.”

“You took a fucking bribe, Spock.” McCoy rose in spite of himself. “Call it what it is.”

“Legal authorities have the right to set terms for the distribution of dangerous substances under their purview. I prefer to think of it as a form of taxation.”

Spock didn’t just have sweets; he’d managed to provide an entire dinner to go with them, and he’d turned down the heat to a relatively tolerable 85 or so degrees. McCoy sat down and boggled at the table: a pitcher of tea, a piece of pan fried steak (a poke of his fork revealed it was real beef, probably from a vacuum pack, not syntho), pinto beans with chunks of raw sweet onion, sweet potato casserole (regrettably without toasted marshmallows on top, but it would do just _fine_ ), corn bread (the kind Yankees made with sugar and some wheat flour, that tasted more like cake, but McCoy wasn’t going to split hairs about the finer points of southern cooking just yet. Let Spock find out what real corn bread tasted like when he visited McCoy’s home and shit, was he already planning to take the Vulcan home with him to meet his relatives? He must be out of his fucking mind).

“I’ll be damned.”

“That would be an undesired, if not an unexpected, outcome.”

“Like you believe in God.” McCoy snorted happily and tore into the food with a groan of pleasure. “Did you cook this?”

“Some of it.” Spock shifted, a little embarrassed. “I must confess I enlisted Nurse Chapel to assist me. She prepared the meat.”

McCoy nodded, his mouth full of beans, chewing hastily and swallowing so he could speak again. “All you needed to make me think I’m home on the farm is turnip greens and fatback.”

“The former can be grown in the hydroponics lab, should you desire, but the latter may prove more difficult to procure.” Spock ate as well, taking a hearty share of everything except the steak.

“Why do I feel like I’m about to be dined, wined, and sixty-nined?” he asked when he’d eaten just enough to feel uncomfortably full; all that was left on his plate were crumbs and he had one more swallow of tea in his glass.

Spock’s dark eyes rested on him for a long moment, and one elegant brow rose. McCoy’s heart rate kicked up in a hurry, leaving him flushed.

“In Vulcan culture, there is no perceived obligation to repay one’s host thus for a meal.” 

McCoy supposed that was true enough, but he could tell Spock wouldn’t protest too hard if some form of… something… happened before the night was over. He didn’t think he would, either. He swallowed hard, fidgeting.

“Dammit, Spock.” McCoy thumped the table with the flat of his palm, making the silverware jump. “How the hell do I know it’s me inside my head anymore? Me wanting what I want, making my own decisions?”

Spock tilted his head. “A valid question, doctor. I could dominate your mind if I made the effort, I confess. But it would not be a pleasant experience for either of us, and you would assuredly notice the interference.”

McCoy frowned. “How would I notice?”

Spock folded his hands in thought. “It varies for different individuals. I could provide a practical demonstration, if you wish. I will attempt to influence you only on the surface level of your thoughts, to make you obey a suggestion on a matter of relative unimportance.” He moved closer. “Do you intend to finish your drink?”

“No, all the sugar’s settled out in the bottom. It’s too sweet.”

“Then that will suffice. If I may?” He lifted his hand, and McCoy tried to compose himself hastily. Spock’s fingers settled. “Drink,” he said, and McCoy felt it resonate through him-- but Spock was right; it didn’t feel the same as his own inclination, and he pushed back the glass, not wanting to. 

“No,” he said, so Spock sent the suggestion again, stronger, reverberating through his mind. It curled around his brain-stem somehow; McCoy could feel it, a constricting sensation, urging his hand to move and wrap around the glass, dragging it back toward him again. He struggled, managing to halt his hand, the glass halfway to his lips; the pressure inside his mind increased, a headache starting to curl unpleasantly at the top of his spine, spiraling tight pain forward toward the center of his forehead. “OK, OK, you can stop. I believe you,” he said hastily, pulling away from Spock’s hand.

Spock withdrew and began to clear the meal away for later clean-up. “My apologies, but you asked.”

“No, I needed to know.” McCoy brushed the apology away, impatient. 

Spock reached out toward him again, two fingers slightly extended. “Do you trust me, knowing what I could do?”

McCoy looked at him for a long moment. “I reckon you could pick me up and break me like a toothpick, if you wanted, but I don’t much think you’ll do that, either.” He swallowed hard and reached back, letting their fingertips touch lightly. The faint electric pulse of telepathic contact ensued, and his headache eased. 

“I’m just not usually,” he paused. It was hard to say to Spock, even though he knew the Vulcan was already well aware. “Attracted to males. Once in a blue moon, sure, but not like this. I had to wonder.”

“I will take that as a compliment.” Something suspiciously like amusement crossed Spock’s face for a flicker of a moment. “Of course, so should you, if you were so irresistible as to overcome my natural restraint and inspire me to compel you.”

“Bastard,” McCoy said without heat. He helped Spock stack the dishes, finishing off a last mouthful of the sweet potato casserole. “That was pretty good. Break out the chess set? I’m feeling just magnanimous enough to let you beat me.” It was hot, but not so bad he didn’t want to hang around a while. There was a big difference between the dry desert heat in Spock’s quarters and heat down in Georgia, where the humidity made the air taste as thick as pea soup.

“I will offer a four-move handicap, or remove two pieces of your choice from my side of the board before we begin.”

“Don’t insult me, Spock. Just the other day in the rec room, you only offered Chekov one.”

“Chekov has been trained in rudimentary strategy and tactics, and he possesses a mild natural aptitude for the game.” 

“Don’t push your luck.” McCoy flopped down irritably, watching Spock assemble the chessboard. 

“Then perhaps instead, I should give you an irresistible incentive to win.” He placed the pieces with an elegant economy of movement, his fingers sure.

“Such as?” McCoy folded his arms and jutted out his chin in challenge.

“I might be willing to forfeit a good night kiss.”

“I’ll have you know I don’t kiss on the first date.”

“This is not our first date.”

“No, it isn’t.” McCoy could feel his grin spreading like a shark’s. “Because you haven’t actually asked me out yet. I’m an old-fashioned boy, Spock.”

“It would not be our first kiss, either.” Spock raised a brow, confused.

“That’s a technicality.” After some deliberation, McCoy moved a pawn. “No kissing on the first date. No petting till the third date. We don’t make out till number four.”

“Make out?” Spock answered his move instantly.

McCoy rolled his eyes and moved again. “Didn’t Uhura teach you anything?” He was going to lose the game, he already knew, but by god, he was going to win the war.

“I believe there is still a significant amount we can teach one another.” He could sense the fire behind Spock’s eyes, and it took all he had to pretend nonchalance in the face of that unseen, half-known hunger.

He raised a brow at Spock, delicately balancing mockery with challenge, and moved a bishop, hoping to hell he remembered correctly and the things traveled on diagonal lines.

*****

The gauntlet was cast.

McCoy sat back to lick his wounds from losing spectacularly at chess, waiting for Spock to find an adequate excuse to ask for a date. He wagered with himself that Spock wouldn’t say it like that; no, he’d make the stuffy formal request they share leisure time for the purposes of recreation. 

But before that could happen, all hell broke loose. 

*****

“You’re the one who’s supposed to keep him from beaming down to every godforsaken planet we fly over,” McCoy blustered at Spock, who sat in the center seat, his eyes half-hooded. “That’s what security personnel are for.”

“The captain favors a hands-on approach to away missions, doctor, as you are well aware.” Spock adopted a look McCoy thought would look more appealing on a taxidermied frog. “I suggest you take a turn at trying to keep him on the bridge.”

“Next time he decides he’s beaming down to a planet like this one, I’ll ground him flat on his ass with an injection,” McCoy grumbled. “Run another sensor sweep.”

“Doctor, we have run seven, with recalibrations in between.”

“You know he’s still alive down there. Jenkins said he saw them hauling Jim off by the ankles, kicking and clawing. You can’t just leave--”

“You know know as well as I: the Conii are recharging their pulse cannons, doctor. Mr. Scott says our shields will not withstand another barrage.”

“Then beam me down before you go to warp and I’ll hunt for him.” McCoy could feel the veins in his temple thumping with tension. 

“Doctor.” Spock frowned, as if he had a faint headache. “I fail to see what advantage losing another member of our command team would create in this situation.”

“You don’t think I’m competent to get him back.” The fact Jim had gone down there to negotiate for rare organic compounds McCoy had wanted to use in synthesizing artificial tissue for transplant into Telurians had nothing to do with his eagerness for self-sacrifice, damn it. “Give me an hour and a phaser. I’ll be in and out of there slicker than goose grease--

“I believe anyone else on board would be equally likely to fall victim to the Conii. Mr. Sulu, prepare for warp. Engage engines.”

McCoy had to feel sorry for the pointy-eared bastard; he really did. But he didn’t have to let on that he was planning a little mutiny all his own. “Fine. If we don’t get him back, it’s all on your head. Or should I just call it your circuit board?”

It wasn’t the best parting shot he’d ever delivered, but he escaped into the turbolift with it echoing behind him. The way he understood warp technology, the Enterprise itself was moving slowly; it was just the universe moving fast around it. If he launched himself in a shuttlecraft, he’d be thrown out of the warp field and all he had to do was wait for the universe to slow itself down. Then before anybody figured out he was gone, he could go back to Conii on his own--

The turbolift halted between floors, refusing to respond when he tried to key the computer.

“Computer access authorization for Lieutenant Commander Leonard H. McCoy has been temporarily revoked,” it informed him primly.

“By who?” McCoy exploded, already knowing the answer.

“Acting Captain Spock.”

 _”God damn it, you pointy-eared green hobgoblin--!”_ McCoy aimed a clumsy karate kick at the computer interface and hurt his foot, but he barely managed to scuff the wall. 

*****

When the turbolift finally condescended to start itself again, McCoy was relieved but unsurprised to find both Spock and Kirk waiting for him on the other side of the door. 

“Bones, I’m back,” Kirk tried geniality, but he was having none of it. He sidestepped Jim and stabbed a finger at the Vulcan. 

“You dirty, rotten, conniving, evil-minded--”

Spock simply lifted his hand, two fingers extended, offering to touch them to the one McCoy had extended in anger. It stopped him cold; Spock’s face was scratched, and a ribbon of green tracked its way down his cheek. 

McCoy snarled with irritation and surprise, but touched his finger to Spock’s anyway. _Apology. Regret. Resignation. Anger. Forgiveness. Relief._ McCoy didn’t bother pausing to sort out what belonged to who. “You get your ass down to sickbay right this red hot minute and let me fix that.” Kirk also was festooned with an array of bruises; the belated realization struck him all at once. “You too, boy wonder.” He bullied them both into the turbolift he’d just vacated. 

Kirk raised a brow at them in surprise, expression intrigued, but McCoy scowled and ignored it. 

He glowered at Spock, still pretty goddamn pissed off. “If you ever pull that particular dirty trick on me again, I’ll diagnose you with Borian tapeworm and give you an enema three times a day for the next six weeks.”

“For your information, doctor, a shuttlecraft ejected from a spaceship traveling at warp risks a 67.35% chance of losing structural integrity and disintegrating upon exiting from the ship’s warp field.”

McCoy conveniently ignored the statistic. “How the hell did you get him back?”

“It is an anecdote of relative complexity. Perhaps you would care to accompany me to dinner so that I may relate it to you. In private.”

“You low-down, manipulative, arrogant, rank-pulling bastard, I ought to--”

“Bones!” Kirk interrupted him, and McCoy paused indignantly in mid-rant.

“What?”

“Shut up and agree to go to dinner with him.” Kirk gave him a wicked grin. “Before half the crew dies of suspense.”

McCoy jerked his head up; the turbolift doors were open, waiting for them to exit, and a small collection of ensigns and yeomen had collected in the corridor. They were all listening with wide eyes and ears sticking out of their heads like sensor arrays on an exploration pod.

“Fine,” McCoy snapped, pulling himself up with dignity. “I’ll have dinner with you and you can tell me what went on while you had me penned up like a chicken in a coop. But my original conditions apply!” He led the way into sickbay, stomping furiously.

“Conditions?”

“The doctor has specified he does not prefer to kiss on the first date,” Spock confided, perfectly bland. 

“Ah. This is only your first date?”

“According to Dr. McCoy, that is correct.”

“And it’ll be a miracle if you ever get another one, at this rate.” McCoy snatched a protoplaser and clutched it with knuckles white from aggravation.

“When _does_ he prefer to kiss?”

“I have hopes for the second date,” Spock said seriously. “After that, I understand there is a prescribed hierarchy of intimate activities whose inclusion is implicit on each subsequent--”

“What is he, a debutante? Is there a code? Where’s all this written down, anyway?” Jim sounded intrigued, damn it all.

“In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m standing right here,” McCoy said, and pointedly turned down the anesthetic levels on the protoplaser before applying it to Jim’s face. 

“Ow! Watch where you’re pointing that thing.”

“Shut up and let me work.” 

Jim obeyed, though not without a smirk at Spock. Just for that, McCoy didn’t turn the anesthesia back up-- not much, anyway. After Jim had gone he closed up Spock’s cut, too, and wiped the blood off his face with a sterile cloth, aware of those dark eyes fixed on him.

“Just where is this date going to take place, Mr. Spock? By now most of the crew will know about it. If we go to Ten Forward, we’ll have an audience twenty rows deep.”

“It would seem logical to place the venue in one of our quarters, doctor.”

“You dog.” McCoy snorted and tossed the disposable wipe in the recycler. 

Spock raised a brow at him, baffled. “As far as I know, the canine and Vulcan genomes have little in common.”

“Put a sock in it, Spock. It’s my turn to host, but after you penned me up today, I’m in no mood to fix you a fancy homemade dinner.” He put the protoplaser away. “I’m counting the time I spent in there as the remainder of my duty shift for the day.”

“Then I will contact the kitchens and ask them to provide a suitable meal.”

“Tell them they can keep the blue protein cubes. I just can’t bring myself to stomach the damn things.”

“Noted.”


	9. Chapter 9

McCoy turned the thermostat in his quarters up to about 32 degrees C just to be hospitable, and Spock turned out to be a perfect gentlemen over electrolyte supplement solution and protein cubes. He and McCoy hardly argued at all that evening. Well, for certain values of “hardly,” the ones equal to Spock and McCoy. 

Fine. If anybody wanted to quibble, McCoy was prepared to admit they argued nearly the whole time they spent together that evening, just like any other. But there wasn’t any real venom in it, and at least they managed to agree that the synthetic food that made up standard rations aboard the Enterprise might be healthful, but it left a lot to be desired in terms of presentation, flavor, and texture on the palate. 

McCoy knew damn well he would have let Spock kiss him after it was over-- or pretty much do anything he wanted, actually-- and he suspected Spock guessed it too, but the Vulcan didn’t even try to go for it, leaving with only a polite nod of farewell. It was just a little frustrating, but McCoy supposed if he wanted a partner he could drive mad with ungovernable passion, he was barking up the wrong tree.

If anyone was going crazy, it was him. Sitting across the table from Spock, feeling uncomfortably sweaty in his uniform shirt, more than half-afraid he smelled bad, watching those dark eyes follow him and knowing that if Spock had come this far, he meant to go the distance….

Well, it was damned hot, for one thing, and he didn’t mean the temperature. It was also pretty damn terrifying, for another. So in the aftermath of what he was now thinking of as Date One, he took a leaf from Spock’s book and did a little research. He had adequate basic knowledge, but no experience, so he looked into what males actually did together (nothing was available on the topic of Vulcans but the worst sort of speculative fiction), then stocked his quarters with a variety of lubricants (and even a few worst-case-scenario medical remedies).

It was all wildly embarrassing. He didn’t have Kirk’s randy self-confidence or his smug willingness to let his personal life be known, and his inexperience with males left him jittery while he did his reading. He even wound up half-panicked after a particularly extreme graphic video; not that he thought Spock would want to put his whole arm up in there, but hell, who knew? 

But that wasn’t what he was afraid of, not really. What really scared him wasn’t half-titillated, half-nervous speculation about what Spock was packing and how he was planning to use it; --dammit, he was the man’s physician and there weren’t a lot of secrets there, or at least he hoped not, for fucksake-- no, what scared him were his worries about _feelings._

Had Spock failed to kiss him because he had no particular urge to do so? Had Leonard made a mistake about the desire he’d thought Spock felt for him? Had his imagination exaggerated or misinterpreted what it didn’t understand? Would it be a partnership in name only, with rare, mostly passionless joinings Spock endured just to placate McCoy-- or maybe none at all; maybe homosexual sex wasn’t logical. 

Maybe Vulcans thought you only had sex to procreate. That seemed logical enough, so was sex for pleasure illogical? Spock always seemed determined not to give evidence of pain. Even if he felt pleasure in coupling, would McCoy ever know about it? Would he be silent and still? Would Spock thrust into his hand a few times, go off without a sound, then expect them both to roll over and go to sleep? 

In human culture, sex was ideally supposed to be about feelings and intimacy. How much of either could he fairly expect from Spock? He could ask Uhura, but damned if he could bring himself to do it. He ought to check out M’Benga’s file, that’s what he ought to do. There was bound to be some kind of helpful information or other in there, even if it wasn’t quite what he needed. But he kept getting distracted away from his desk by endless minor incident after minor incident, and he was never isolated for long enough to actually dig into the damned thing.

“Ship’s choir is giving a concert tonight in Ten Forward,” he finally typed into his computer terminal a few days later. “1800 hours. Mozart. I’ll hold you a seat if you want to come along.” A few seconds later, a stiffly formal “I shall be delighted” arrived in response, pleasing and agonizing him by turns for the rest of the afternoon. 

Spock joined him only moments before the choir began, sitting upright and attentive through the recital, in which Uhura’s _coloratura_ soprano figured prominently. McCoy sat and fretted, wondering if their presence here together on Date Two pissed her off, maybe even hurt her. He hoped not. There weren’t a lot of purely social events he could’ve chosen to ask Spock to, not if he wanted to move things along. 

As for that-- tonight was supposed to end with a kiss; he’d implied it, and it was all he could think about. Would it happen? What would it be like? He could hardly remember the first one, he’d been so shocked by the meld. He’d thought Spock felt desire, or something pretty damn like it in all relevant respects, but was he sure? Maybe it had just been wishful thinking.

He glanced at the Vulcan’s placid profile and wondered suddenly whether he was thinking so loudly Spock could hear him again. Sure enough, an arch sideways flicker of eyes and a raised brow made him turn beet red in an instant. He fixed his eyes on the conductor’s podium and kept them glued there, purely mortified.

Spock turned his hand palm-up on his thigh, and McCoy realized his first two fingers were extended, a silent invitation. Stealthily he reached out, touching them with his own, trying to project contrition. 

Spock’s fingertips stirred, tracing lightly along his fingers, down and back. _Shit, that’s probably the Vulcan equivalent of soul-kissing in public or something,_ flashed through his mind faster than he could slam the lid down on it, and his thought was met with a distinct wave of amusement. That was good, right?

 _Calm yourself, Leonard._ The voice resonated in his head distinctly, and for a moment he believed Spock had spoken aloud, but no one turned to frown at them. 

_I’ll make you think calm. Bloodless cold fish of a Vulcan..._ McCoy subsided, grumbling. 

Spock’s response to that slammed into his brain rather like an old-fashioned projectile weapon firing a slug and hitting a china plate dead-center: a visual of Spock dragging McCoy across his lap and devouring his mouth, completed by the choir trailing off with great confusion, right in the middle of the _kyrie eleison_.

McCoy was immediately and acutely afflicted with the curse of his gender, and he snatched his fingertips away before he could see any more, shooting Spock a glare that mingled blowtorch fury, prudish affront, and blazing lust. Spock raised an inquiring brow at him as if he did not understand the intensity of the response, folded his hands, and returned his attention to the music, the very picture of innocence.

“That wasn’t very damn funny,” somehow McCoy managed to contain the words in until the concert was over, but he erupted like a volcano as soon as the applause started in earnest, almost loud enough to drown him out. 

“On the contrary, doctor. I believe young Lieutenant Riley experienced a great deal of difficulty keeping his place in the score after seeing your face.”

“You evil, filthy-minded faker. I’m never going to believe another word of your impassive, decorous bullshit. Not one. Not after that little stunt.” McCoy was sputtering in spite of himself, stalking out with only the most cursory of polite nods toward the performers.

“Did my thoughts fail to align with your inclinations, doctor?” Bland as tapioca, that voice. Maybe Spock was deliberately timing his responses for mutual convenience, but McCoy didn’t give a damn; the turbolift doors were sliding shut, leaving them alone together. The lift had only just started to move before he slapped the all-stop. Pushing Spock up against the wall without preamble, he crushed their lips together. 

Spock met his forcefulness with a mind-annihilating blend of surrender and aggression, mouth opening to welcome him, hard, strong hands rising to pull him close and tilt his head just as Spock wanted it. The world turned hot and slick and perfect, with plenty of biting and licking and breathless gasping and the sting of teeth sinking in his lower lip and the lean muscular hardness of Spock burning against him all over-- and then, the unmistakable sensation of Spock’s shaft rising to push against his own, awkward and insistent. 

McCoy heard himself whimper-- or perhaps he heard Spock make a low sound, almost a growl, as he was turned so he was held fast against the wall, the one being devoured, the one feeling the blood-hot erection that thrust against him slowly once, then again, before Spock drew back, releasing him with maddening self-control.

“Delays to turbolift response could prove a significant impediment to the ship’s battle-readiness, doctor.” His voice had a definite husk to it, smoke over smooth velvet. It definitely did rude things to McCoy’s primitive lizard brain. Spock re-activated the turbolift and stood back, straightening his uniform tunic with polite precision. 

“That wasn’t very logical at all, Mr. Spock,” McCoy managed to grumble. His head was spinning, and every drop of the blood he required for higher brain function had migrated approximately two and a half feet south of his cerebellum.

“You have always found fault with my preference for logical action in the past, doctor. Your ceasing to prefer logic’s opposite at this moment leads me to conclude you enjoy raising objections merely for the purpose of inciting argument.”

“Wasn’t a complaint.” McCoy tried to catch his breath and compose himself; it was a struggle for him, though it apparently came to Spock as naturally as breathing. “Merely an observation.”

“I stand corrected.” The turbolift slowed to a stop and Spock stepped through the door as it opened. “Thank you for a most enjoyable evening, doctor.” 

The door shut before McCoy could come up with a suitable rejoinder, and that was the end of Date Two.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I added new tags... they will eventually all become relevant. I'm writing the last chapter now, and there'll also be an epilogue to follow it, so I should be able to finish posting within the month, latest-- I hope. :-) 
> 
> Please don't freak out about the tags if you don't like alpha/omega stories; this fic won't go there. ;-D

The ball was back in Spock’s court, but despite McCoy’s eagerness to see what he’d do with it, duty came first. They spent the next two months playing cat and mouse with the Klingons, who kept sending cloaked ships into Federation space to prod delicately at various defenses and disturb peaceful planets despite all Organian efforts to the contrary. 

Constant yellow alert meant McCoy was on call around the clock, and the skirmishes as they bullied various ships and ground troops away from their prey meant he slept at his desk as often as his bed, setting broken arms, regenerating tissue from phaser burns, and doing the occasional surgery whenever a surface altercation got really nasty, or a photon torpedo slipped through the shields.

Jim was exhausted too. McCoy twisted his arm with regulations and managed to force him to sleep at least 12 out of every 48 hours, but Spock barely slept at all. McCoy knew he needed it, but he couldn’t get the bastard to come off the bridge, especially not while Kirk was resting. 

Finally the damage to the ship got so extensive that Starfleet sent the Exeter and the Intrepid to spell them, and everybody except Scotty suddenly got their long-needed downtime.

When the tide of work went out, McCoy found himself sitting at his desk, staring at Bob, who still hung impassively on the wall. He felt entirely incapable of rising to his feet so he could stagger back to his quarters, mind and body both too numb and exhausted to realize they could rest. He just sat there, as if waiting for the inevitable tidal wave to rush in and sweep him away.

When he reached into a drawer to see what he’d had on his plate before all hell broke loose, M’Benga’s file lay under his fingertips. He clicked his tongue at himself in exasperation. Disturbing a thin layer of dust, he flipped open the cover and started to read.

The file started out with a set of annotated drawings with a brief summary of the position and nature of Vulcan reproductive organs-- including female ones, which McCoy hadn’t ever had the opportunity to examine, and probably never would. The novelty caught his attention. Apparently they only had a single ovary per female, a fairly standard uterus (one that apparently functioned without the inconvenient self-cleansing methods human females endured), and a vagina located conveniently where you’d expect to find it on a humanoid. M’Benga didn’t comment about enervation or its role in sexual function, and McCoy supposed that wasn’t any of his business.

He flipped past it, feeling vaguely like a voyeur, and looked at the male set with curiosity. It made him feel guilty, self-conscious of his more-than-medical interest in the topic. He’d observed Spock’s physique a number of time during medical examinations, but paid little attention to the area other than to note that the testes were internal and tentatively to label four bodies located in approximately the right area and appropriately ducted into the penis as the likely culprits. Four. He snorted. Sure enough, there they were, marked on the diagram beyond the shadow of a doubt. Damn. He couldn’t accuse Spock of not having balls. 

Blood supply, erectile function… all seemed similar to humanoid standard, though the structures in question looked a little different (for one thing, the tip was less blunt and curved slightly back; a glance back at the vaginal structure indicated that was to facilitate delivery of the semen directly to the female’s single, central fallopian tube. The glans had two pronounced ridges beneath it, and McCoy speculated that at some point in Vulcan history, reproductive success had vested in the ability to scoop a rival male’s sperm out of the female’s body before replacing it with one’s own). 

He frowned, scanning the notes. Reproductive uncertainty was definitely a factor in early Vulcan evolution. If he was reading this right, erection could cause the glans to swell so much it couldn’t be extracted from the penetrated body until climax was achieved and arousal receded, reducing the chances that a fertile female could be bred by additional males. Well, that wasn’t limited to Vulcans, though it was relatively rare among the humanoids he’d studied. “This condition is particularly likely to happen as a symptom of--,” he read, scowling at the Vulcan term. “ _Plak tow?_ ….Some kind of fever?” 

He shut the folder and stuffed it back in its drawer; his tired eyes crossed whenever they tried to focus, and Vulcan medical terminology was far beyond his capacity at the moment. Closing his eyes and massaging them with the heels of his hands, he leaned back in his chair, groaning, and cracked his back. What he wouldn’t give for a--

Warm hands fell on his shoulders, but he didn’t need to feel the temperature to identify their owner. Spock’s mind touched his, careful and gentle, shimmering like an exotic jewel: cool, smooth, and perfect.

“Doctor McCoy. If you fall asleep in this chair, it will do nothing to improve the condition of your back.”

McCoy made a restive grunt, combative by habit, but didn’t pull away. “You got any better ideas?”

“Indeed. I hoped you might consent to accompany me to my quarters for an evening of mutual relaxation.” Spock turned the chair, and their eyes met and held; McCoy swallowed thickly.

 _Touch me, he wants to touch me he wants to--_ Apparently there was an adolescent girl living in his head, yelling and jumping up and down on the bed in the most appallingly embarrassing manner. The corners of the dark eyes crinkled at him with amusement.

“Yes,” Spock confirmed very simply, and the velvet promise behind that tone dragged McCoy up and out of his chair and all the way into Spock’s quarters before exhaustion could catch up with him again. 

The heat hit him like a wall, making him want to sag at the knees, and as he stood, dazedly trying to acclimate to it, a number of sights gradually penetrated his exhaustion-fogged cognition. First, the bed was turned down, inviting; several towels lay at hand. Second, the extreme temperature, slightly higher than Spock’s preferred baking-hot atmosphere, must be due to the warming unit in the corner, which held several round, smooth stones on its broad top. He blinked at them, failing to comprehend for a moment before he realized they were stones intended for therapeutic massage, taken from his own sickbay. There was also an unfamiliar flask carved of russet stone veined with obsidian. 

A pleasant scent of incense filled the air-- rich and piquant. The closest he could come to describing it was “spiced pumpkin.” It had some of the same soothing, warming qualities, but the sharp notes of the spices were unfamiliar and the rich foody smell definitely wasn’t pumpkin. It was a creamy smell, though, and it made McCoy inhale deeply despite the hot air, drawing as much of it into his lungs as he could. Maybe the scent came from the candles; several burned in corners of the room, providing a dim, golden light. An insulated pitcher stood by the bed, its gleaming sides coated with condensation, and a glass waited next to it.

“You hacked the ship’s fire prevention system,” it occurred to McCoy after a moment. Usually if anybody so much as lit a candle, the ship’s computer would have a conniption fit, braying warnings and spraying flame-retardant foam everywhere. 

“Starfleet is legally required to permit Vulcan officers to ignite flames in their quarters for the specific purpose of meditation. Certain unseen safeguards are in effect.” Spock paused, apparently considering his next remark. “Doctor, I would not wish to make you feel uncomfortable, but my plans would be greatly facilitated if you remove the majority of your clothing before we begin.”

“Plans?” McCoy felt a thrill of arousal shiver through him despite his weariness. “Third date plans?” It looked more like Spock was getting ready to give him a spa treatment, actually. He looked at Spock’s long, expressive hands, incredibly strong, and swallowed hard, flushing.

Spock tilted his head, acquiescing to that interpretation. “As you say.”

“I’ll strip off just as much as you will.” McCoy couldn’t help himself; apparently everything had to be a competition. “But look, Spock. This isn’t fair. You’ve slept less than I have for the past few weeks. You expect me to just lie down and take a massage? That’d be selfish.”

“How can it be so, when there is as much pleasure to be had in the giving as in the receiving?” Spock tilted his head, appearing puzzled. He reached for the hem of his uniform shirt and pulled it over his head; McCoy took a deep breath, drinking in the sight of his ruffled hair and his lean, well-muscled chest, dusted with crisp hair, just as dark as the hair on his head. 

“I get to touch you, too,” McCoy warned, and Spock nodded, untroubled. 

He actually felt shy peeling off his shirt. Usually for a doctor things were the other way around; McCoy was used to remaining fully clad while other people got naked and did whatever he said.

Boots off, trousers off… Spock stopped there, so McCoy did too, feeling a little grateful he didn’t have to go stark naked. “Now what?” Spock filled the regulation underwear so well McCoy’s mouth watered. Who would have thought form-fitting black shorts could look that good? 

“Lie down on the bed, doctor.” A hand settled on his shoulder, intensifying the soft buzz of Spock’s mind. Strange how the telepathy didn’t really bother him so much anymore; Spock didn’t seem upset by McCoy’s ungoverned thoughts, not even the ones that sounded like an adolescent girl. He hadn’t even mocked McCoy for having them. It made McCoy envision shifting lines drawn in red sand: things they knew were all right, or not all right, to do or say. Tonight they would cross one of those lines and redraw it elsewhere. Maybe they would draw it somewhere between them both and the rest of the galaxy.

McCoy shivered despite the heat. He obeyed Spock and lay down, feeling a little shy even though he’d slept in the man’s bed before. 

Spock took his time, gathering the items he wanted, then settled at McCoy’s side, moving smoothly but with grace. He hesitated for a moment, as if he held his breath, then laid hands on McCoy with reverence.

Spock’s hands slid over him slowly, a gentle exploration, and in his mind he felt the echo of that touch: Spock’s pleasure in it, his admiration of McCoy’s form, his interest in the contour of muscle and bone and his appreciation of the symmetry, the contrasts, the fine distinctions in the texture and grain of McCoy’s skin as he moved from region to region. McCoy flushed a little with embarrassment, but he knew Spock felt his own pleasure, his enjoyment of the heat of Spock’s hands, and his arousal, which had already started to kindle in response to the touch. He shifted, his cock uncomfortably trapped between the weight of his body and Spock’s bed.

Amusement washed over him, mild but definite-- there was to be plenty of frustration for them both tonight, since Spock had no intention of doing more than touching him for the strictly limited purposes of massage. It was, after all, a rule he had specified.

McCoy snorted aloud at the dance they were both performing around one another: measured, careful steps, deliberate checks and balances designed to entice and enflame. It didn’t matter that they were both dancing, or that each knew the other was doing it. What mattered was the dance itself and its much-desired conclusion, anticipation growing keener with each carefully planned, meticulously executed step.

McCoy thought with faint rue of his embarrassment at having his skin bared. That was nothing compared to this intimacy, which left both of them bare, and which hinted at far greater depths that remained to be explored. 

“Gonna have to step up my game,” he murmured, feeling the fingers on him begin to press and knead. “Here you are working hard as you can, and I’ve been coasting. Next time’s gonna be different.”

Spock’s answer came in the form of strong, well-oiled hands that kneaded him until his muscles turned to jelly. He could only lie there and enjoy it-- the slow heat of fingertips tracing his spine, the circling of thumbs, the heavy warm stones Spock placed to relax pressure points while he unknotted muscles elsewhere, relaxing McCoy until he couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore. 

Spock poured from the pitcher, the trickle rousing McCoy briefly. “Drink, so you will not overheat,” Spock murmured, and held the glass to his lips. It was good: filtered spring water, cold and pure, not the ship’s recycled standard. When the rest of the liquid warmed too much for drinking, Spock smoothed it onto his back over the sweet oil and the evaporation cooled him quickly, making him sigh with pleasure. There was a cooling pad under him, too; he was sure of it. The hot rocks actually felt good by comparison, their heavy, comforting pressure soothing him.

All the while, that low buzz of the link lay open between their minds, and he could feel Spock’s pleasant absorption in his task, complementing his own bliss. Spock memorized shapes, tensions, textures, and responses; he noticed where McCoy held his tension and experimented until he discovered how best to soothe it away. He repeated anything McCoy particularly liked and worked carefully over any points of pain until the knots were soothed away, but he kept his fingers scrupulously distant from any erogenous zones. In spite of that, arousal pulsed through McCoy, a low, simmering flame fed by the delicacy and strength of every touch, by the soft sounds of Spock’s breath, by the knowledge that it was Spock touching him.

Spock’s own tensions bled out of him as he worked, as if the massage were meditation, until McCoy could feel how he existed only in palms and fingers and the place where his body rested atop McCoy’s, rocking gently against him as he moved. Spock, too, felt pleasure bordering on arousal, and the sense of it warmed them both through the link though he kept careful control over himself, deliberating every motion before executing it.

Their breath rose and fell in synch, and McCoy was too weary to realize it was slowing, slowing… until he was dozing, dreaming of Spock’s graceful, tender hands and strong thighs as the massage continued, easing him down into deep sleep. Finally he dreamed of Spock removing the stones from his back and curling around him slowly, careful not to wake him, pressing a single kiss to the nape of his neck before settling down at his side. Then he slept without dreaming, indifferent to the unimportant distinction of whether his consciousness inhabited the body of the man who was holding or the one being held. 

When McCoy woke to the chiming of the chrono, he was confused for a moment before he could separate himself from the drowsy, sensual tangle of limbs they had become. He lay there for a moment, trying to ensure he would always remember the sensation of waking up next to Spock, of feeling that unfamiliar skin against him, the intriguing brush of Spock’s soft, fine body hair tickling his palms. Spock made a low murmur of inquiry as the clock gave a second chime, and McCoy sighed, nuzzling against Spock’s feather-fine hair for a long moment before rising.

“That was good, but I didn’t get to touch you enough before I fell asleep,” McCoy admitted. They dressed quietly in the soothing red dim. In the hall Spock waited for him, lifting his hand to touch their fingertips together before they separated, the peaceful buzz of awareness lingering in McCoy’s mind even though it dimmed as they went about their duties. 

He strolled to sickbay humming, avoiding Chapel’s curious gaze. Anybody who came within a mile of him could smell Spock’s incense and massage oil, but McCoy felt so good he didn’t give a rat’s ass. 

“Call me if anything comes in that needs a doctor,” he instructed. “I have some paperwork to finish up.” He walked straight into his office to take care of it, but first he made some calls and started the ball rolling on a couple of ideas he’d come up with for date four. He didn’t want to wait any longer than he had to.


	11. Chapter 11

As soon as they arrived at Starbase 30, the ship turned into a ghost town manned by a skeleton crew, so McCoy finally dismissed Chapel and M’Benga, leaning back with his feet on his desk to reach for the long-neglected file. He’d hardly flipped it open when a throat cleared from the door and he shoved it back in its drawer again, looking up with a start and feeling guilty like he hadn’t since he was about eleven and his dad caught him in the den at three AM, watching a soft-core porn holo about green Orion slave women. 

It was Nyota, hesitating in the door, as though she were a deer and would bolt into the woods if he moved too quickly. So he just stayed very still until she stepped forward, the door hissing closed behind her.

“Lieutenant.” He wondered if his momentary illusion was reversed-- maybe she was the predator after all, come to take a chunk out of him in revenge for losing Spock. Now that he’d sampled the wares, he couldn’t imagine anybody who’d had a taste of Spock giving him up without a fight. Maybe a lot of fights. Too many fights, he thought suddenly as she approached, her eyes liquid with pain. Too many fights where she clawed at Spock, trying to dig for something she didn’t know he was already giving because she’d never had the link. She’d never seen inside the way McCoy had. Spock hadn’t ever let her. ….Maybe he hadn’t actually been able to give what she needed, after all.

“I’m sorry,” he said, blurted into the silence between them, and she blinked at him, her lashes as sable as Spock’s, her face pinched tight with the regret Spock wouldn’t show, even though McCoy knew he felt it. 

“Don’t be.” She bit her lip, reaching into her pocket. Her fingers played with something hidden there. “For his sake, don’t ever be.”

“We work,” McCoy tried to explain, and found himself at a loss for anything else to say.

“We didn’t,” she acknowledged-- a flash of her bitterness became visible for just an instant in the way faint lines formed at the corners of her eyes and lips. “I tried to give this back to him some time ago. He wouldn’t take it.” Her hand opened, revealing a soft spill of chain wrought in an alloy McCoy didn’t recognize, threaded through a pendant in layers of diamond shape with a polished blue stone gleaming at its center. 

“It belonged to his mother, and he gave it to me soon after we got together.” Her lips quivered just a little, then firmed. “It’s a stone from Vulcan, one of the last fragments left. It’s precious to him. I don’t feel right about keeping it.” She let the pendant spill from her hand and extended it toward McCoy, dangling from its chain. “Now you’re with him, you should probably have it.” 

McCoy reached out, hesitant, and she let it fall into his palm, lifting her hand to dab at the corners of her eyes. Her voice wobbled just a little. “Good luck to the both of you. He deserves to be happy.” She cocked her hip suddenly, defiant. “He uses that stone as a tracking device, so if you ever want him not to find you, don’t take it along.”

“Yeah, I knew. Uhura…” he sought for something to say that might comfort her, that might thank her enough, but the words that flowed so readily whenever he and Spock were arguing dried up in the face of her obvious unhappiness. “I’ll take care of him,” he finished lamely.

She nodded, suddenly fierce. “I’ll hold you to that,” she whispered, her voice hard. Then she was gone. 

McCoy sat back, examining the little piece of Vulcan lying in his palm. He’d have to give it back to Spock on Uhura’s behalf; he didn’t have a right to it himself. It was beautiful, though, and he could imagine Spock’s mother giving it to her only son, telling him her daughter-in-law should have it one day. He wondered if T’Pring would have realized its value and cherished it.

*****

That evening when they met for dinner he returned the necklace to Spock, who stood very still for a long moment, staring down at it shining in his hand as if he’d never seen the thing before. The sense of Spock in McCoy’s head felt vaguely disquieted but not really upset-- strange how he could tell. When Spock finally took the thing, he turned it over in his fingers and rubbed his thumb over the blue.

“Lieutenant Uhura is a perceptive and caring individual, and has guessed my wishes in the matter,” he said at last. “She acted logically in giving it to you.” He returned the necklace to McCoy’s hand and folded his fingers closed around it.

“Oh, now Spock,” McCoy started to protest, but he could feel Spock’s resolve, and he swallowed hard against his own wash of dizzy emotion-- awe and love and guilt and embarrassment, but definitely pleasure, too, and part of him even wanted to start leaking at the eyes. Spock raised a brow at him.

“Really, Doctor McCoy,” he intoned at his most formal. “It is simply a bauble, of little intrinsic value. To invest it with such sentiment is maudlin at best.”

“Maudlin, is it?” McCoy fired back, feeling his spine snap straight. “I’ll have you know, my fine Vulcan friend, that I’m not the only one who thinks this thing is special to you. I thought Uhura was about to bite a chunk out of my neck when she came at me with it! Breakup or not, she’d wade through hell to fight a circle saw if she thought it’d save you!”

“Given that I am aboard a ship largely crewed by humans, I can hardly be blamed for the rampant emotionalism and unprofessional behavior of others with whom I associate.”

“The next time you break down and laugh I’m going to shoot video so I can hack in and play it on a loop on the ship’s computer for a week. No, a _month._ ”

“Doctor McCoy, should I ever do such an improbable thing, you are more than welcome to try.” He raised a brow, the picture of decorum: haughty and perfect. 

McCoy didn’t know whether to laugh himself or kiss the man. He settled for removing his own necklace and putting the new one on. He tucked it away inside his collar, hiding it from prying eyes. “Here,” he said, and passed over his own. It didn’t have a precious stone in it, and he probably couldn’t track it from across a room, but it meant something to him. “That was my daddy’s. It’s got his fraternity symbol on the front: Kappa Alpha order. I pledged, too, at Ole Miss before I got into med school. He was proud of me; he gave it to me after I got inducted.” He cleared his throat. “I don’t think there’s ever been a Vulcan in the order. You might be on the receiving end of some weird greetings from people who think you’re a frat brother, but when you don’t give the countersign, they’ll leave you alone.”

“Thank you, doctor.” Spock slid the necklace over his head and hid the pendant away, and McCoy did not miss the faint smile that crossed his face.

“You smiled!” he crowed, triumphant. 

“Doctor. You are insulting me.” Spock drew himself erect, raising a haughty brow. 

“Like hell I am. I saw it. You smiled!”

The argument continued all the way to the mess hall.


	12. Chapter 12

It took nearly three months for McCoy’s arrangements to come through, but he wasn’t disappointed; he’d expected them to take even longer. 

It was all right; though. Spock spent most of that time planetside, studying the effects of solar radiation on mutations in planaria on Mukar IV, where researchers thought they might be coming close to a cure for choriocytosis. Certain micro-organisms on the planet produced strobolin naturally, and scientists had located a mutated strain that produced more than the others, but the mutant planaria didn’t reproduce efficiently enough to make much, so the mutation had to be duplicated and, if possible, stabilized. Since natural strobolin didn’t stop working like the synthetic version, of course half of what remained of Vulcan was desperate to find a way to make more. 

McCoy didn’t grudge him the time away; instead, he read the expedition’s reports every night and made notes for Spock and sent them, providing what little help he could. 

He missed Spock more than he liked to let on, and his body made its frustration with the long absence clearly felt. McCoy sighed, setting aside his PADD and turning off the light. It was going to be another one of _those_ nights, he could tell already. That nagging itch just under his skin, the restlessness in his mind… maybe he could head it off at the pass.

It felt awkward to fantasize about Spock, and the guilt kept him from getting along properly. At least when he was asleep he wasn’t worrying about how Spock might be listening in….

He fell asleep on his back with one hand tucked inside his undershorts, half-aroused.

Spock was waiting for him in his dream, standing by his bedside. He gazed down, then set a hip on McCoy’s mattress, reaching to set a hand on his chest, preventing him from rising. 

“Good evening, doctor,” he murmured, voice heavy and rich like velvet. McCoy’s body surged with heat at the familiar sound, and the low buzz of his presence, his touch. 

“You seem troubled,” Spock said, his hand drifting along McCoy’s belly, drawing a lazy crescent. McCoy shivered, hips moving restlessly. “Perhaps I can be of assistance.”

“Fuck,” McCoy swore helplessly, his limbs so heavy he couldn’t move them. “Spock, how…?”

“You are dreaming, doctor.” His lips shaped the words with infinite tenderness, and his other hand rose to stroke McCoy’s brow, then lingered on his face, resting on the telepathic contact points. 

McCoy rumbled contentment and relaxed, lifting against the caresses. “Oh, well, everything’s all right, then.”

Spock raised a brow. “Indeed?”

“Well, not quite everything.” It seemed perfectly reasonable to be shameless, since this wasn’t real. 

“As I suspected.” Spock almost seemed to smile, touching his lips with one finger, and McCoy purred up at him as his hand slid downward. His clothes vanished with the sudden convenience of dreaming, but he felt no shame or uncertainty. Such a thing couldn’t exist, not here. Spock curled against him in the wide, soft bed-- and in a thought he was naked too, all warm skin and vulnerable body-- impossible, incredible, maddening. 

McCoy melted against him, lipping kisses everywhere he could reach, filling his hands with every sensation-- the slide and play of muscles under flesh, the secret brush of dark, curling hair, the curves and planes of back and buttocks. Spock’s hand closed around him, stroking, and McCoy lifted into it, giddy with pure relief at having Spock’s touch on him at last.

They kissed, tongues sliding together, and McCoy groaned into Spock’s mouth. It felt so good, so right to have Spock close this way, sharing this with him, their minds entangled as sensually as their bodies. It felt more natural, more perfect, than anything he had ever known; no lover had ever touched him so deeply, never made him feel so happy and comfortable and safe. 

“You know I love you, you obnoxious green-blooded…” invective failed him. “Spock,” he finished simply, and the word was tender on his lips. 

“I am aware of it, Leonard.” Spock kissed him then, deep and slow and perfect, hand moving in exactly the best way. He dragged Spock close and came in a deep, helpless gush of pleasure, whimpering against Spock’s lips. “Stay,” he asked, his voice slurring as he sank deeper into sleep.

“I am here,” Spock said, and Leonard slept, deeply peaceful. He woke the next day with vague memories and a spring in his step despite the clean-up. Whenever Spock appeared in his dreams, bringing comfort and pleasure, he welcomed him. 

*****

While Spock was busy experimenting on worms, the Enterprise stayed nearby, charting a nearby solar system and surveying the geophysical features of planets to see if any valuable materials might be found on them. McCoy’s delivery caught up with him when a courier ship passed the Enterprise _en route_ to Starbase 17. After Scotty called he went straight down to examine the huge, squashy package that materialized on the cargo platform in transporter room 2. It was vacuum packed, sealed in plastic, and looked a lot heavier than it was. Some idiot somewhere had torn it open to see inside and there were inspection and quarantine stickers everywhere. 

McCoy carried it back to his quarters in a hurry and tore into it-- nobody had been damn fool enough to put any of the stickers on the delicate fabric, and he could still make out the comforting scent of home when he held it to his face and inhaled. He put it on his bed. Perfect.

The holovids he’d asked for were all there, too; 100 of the best classic movies of all time. Spock might not like them all, but they’d be great argument fodder. He grinned at them and put them away. Now if he could just cajole Jim into letting him sneak off with one of the big flatscreen monitors from Stellar Cartography…. After all, the head of the Science department wasn’t around to stick his curious green nose into McCoy’s requisitions and queer the deal. While the cat’s away, the mice will play. 

He managed to be on hand a week later when they returned to Mukar IV to pick up the first officer and other crewmembers who’d been helping out. He didn’t quite have the brass to just stand and watch the transport, so he lingered in the corridor outside, pretending to stroll past just as a coincidence, but knew he was busted the minute Spock raised an elegant eyebrow at him. 

“Spock! Back so soon? If I didn’t know better, I’d almost say it was good to see you,” McCoy drawled, and dared to offer two fingers. Spock matched the gesture without hesitation.

“Then it is perhaps fortunate that you know better, for it will spare me the need to offer meaningless platitudes in response to your own.” The warmth of Spock’s thoughts belied his austere words and manner.

“You never change, do you.” 

“Your statement is illogical, as all organic beings are in a continual state of flux, experiencing countless chemical reactions and--”

“Give it a rest,” McCoy advised him. “I saw you finally narrowed down the ultraviolet bandwidth and isolated the particular frequencies you needed to induce the strobolin producing mutation. Are they already setting up planaria farms down there?”

“Yes. The organisms respond readily to cultivation. Your suggestion that we take into account local variations in the density of the water where the original mutated colonies arose was quite useful,” Spock offered. “It altered the filtration rate of ultraviolet light and created a different environment than the unsuccessful one in our initial experiments.” From him, McCoy supposed that was nearly as good as an ‘I love you.’ 

“Maybe you’d like to tell me all about the experiments,” McCoy hesitated for a moment. “Over dinner. In my quarters.” He felt his heart rate kick into overdrive. Spock, of course, would be well aware of his involuntary nervous response, and would correctly interpret its meaning. 

“That would be a productive use of our off-duty hours,” Spock agreed, absolutely calm. 

McCoy rolled his eyes. “All right. I’ll expect you.”

He spent the time until Spock arrived dusting, fussing over the newly installed monitor from Stellar Cartography, and fetching back a special dinner he’d managed to wangle out of the boys down at the mess hall (neither of whom were likely to need either a colonoscopy or a bone marrow biopsy any time soon, so his offer to let them skip those particular procedures for the next five years was largely immaterial). 

It only occurred to him that he might want to change clothes or maybe even shower when his door chimed to let him know Spock had arrived. He sighed, straightening the hem of his shirt, and glanced over at the bed as he called to let Spock in. “Come!” He was as ready as he was ever going to get.

Spock stepped in, wearing not the familiar uniform blues, but a dark silk tunic and loose breeches over sandals. McCoy stood blinking at him foolishly for a moment. 

“I didn’t know you had any leisure clothes,” he said rather stupidly, then flushed. 

“They are rarely necessary aboard the Enterprise,” Spock said smoothly, stepping forward to let the door slide shut again. 

“They look good. I ordered us dinner,” McCoy managed, trying to tear his eyes from the loose folds of silk, which somehow managed to transform the familiar, lean lines of Spock’s body into something exotic and tantalizing. “Would you like to sit down?” He felt awkward and inane, but Spock sat smoothly and began to eat, apparently pleased with the fruit salad appetizer, then the dinner of parsnips with cinnamon and butter alongside bread and vegetable stew.

Talk of the experiment soon smoothed over their awkward beginning, and by the time they finished eating, they were so engrossed in technical details McCoy almost forgot to bring out the holovids.

“I got a care package from home a few days back,” he finally said when the conversation faltered. “Some of Earth’s great classic movies. I’m afraid a lot of them are in 2D, but they’re still some of the greatest movies ever made. Want to watch one of them with me?”

“That would be a welcome diversion.” Spock blinked when McCoy pulled back the curtain covering his prized, pilfered flat screen. “Something tells me, doctor, that I should not order Ensign Laertes to perform an inventory on the stellar cartography lab equipment at the current time.”

McCoy huffed annoyance. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He’d taken care to arrange the screen so the best place to sit and look at it was the bed. “Sit down over here. Those clothes you’ve got on look good, but they’re whisper thin. You must be freezing.” He picked up his prize and shook it out: a thick, puffy goose-down comforter with an intricately quilted cotton shell, worked in an intricate flying goose motif. 

“Wrap up in this. It’s stuffed with feathers-- they make good natural insulation. My grandmother made the cover on an old-fashioned sewing machine with a pedal.” He hesitated. “She had a huge flock of weeder geese for the farm. Every year at molt she’d harvest the down by hand, and it would grow back in time for the next winter, so it’s cruelty-free. She wasn’t on the solar grid back then, so it got pretty cold in the house sometimes in the winter. Nothing like one of these to warm you right up.”

“It is good to know no geese suffered or died to make your quilt.” Spock smoothed his hand over the sewing, admiring the symmetry of the pattern and the tiny, even stitches. “Your grandmother was an excellent seamstress.”

“She’d be proud to hear you say it.” McCoy grinned at him. “Here’s a good movie. It’s a romance, only it doesn’t come out the way you think.”

Spock lifted a brow as McCoy stuck in _Casablanca_. It was a bit of a calculated gamble; Spock would probably prefer something like _Twelve Angry Men_ or _Citizen Kane_ , but McCoy had spent a long time planning this. He figured _Casablanca_ was just sappy enough to bore Spock and thereby encourage a little making out-- while still being classical and renowned, so the Vulcan wouldn’t have a decent excuse to refuse to come back some time and try watching another movie with him.

McCoy very carefully tried not to think about all his scheming as he started the holo, focusing on the movie’s classical reputation instead. When he turned back, Spock had kicked off his sandals-- who’d ever known the logic-obsessed hobgoblin actually had _feet?!_ With _toes,_ of all things-- and McCoy watched as he curled up on the coverlet, lying atop half of it and folding the other half over himself. 

_Mr. Spock is in my bed,_ the adolescent girl who lived somewhere in McCoy’s brain picked the opportune moment to start shrieking. He rolled his eyes at himself with exasperation. 

“You are blocking my view of your ill-gotten screen, Leonard.” Spock shifted to the side, neatly lifting the coverlet and leaving an inviting space for him to lie down in.

McCoy kicked off his own boots before he did so, wishing he’d thought in time to change into something less constrictive than uniform trousers, but he lay down nonetheless, trying not to feel nervous as a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. 

“The movie you have selected is an obvious subterfuge, doctor,” Spock murmured when he was well-arranged. The Vulcan paid no attention whatsoever to the opening credits on the screen. “If you wished to convince me you actually intended us to watch the film, you should have chosen another.” 

They lay very close on the small bed, Spock on his side and McCoy pillowed on his outstretched arm. The buzz of telepathy felt very strong, warm and inviting, Spock’s eyes deep enough to drown in. McCoy knew his voice well enough by now to hear the faintest hint of laughter threatening to escape. His hand settled to rest on McCoy’s belly, fingers splayed, possessive, and he reached to touch McCoy’s lips with one finger.

“I must be sleeping,” McCoy murmured. He had often dreamed of them lying together exactly like this; he knew precisely how Spock would continue, exactly what he was likely to do next…. 

“Not this time.” Spock gazed at him with a faintly smug look on his face.

“You mean you--” McCoy stopped and took a deep breath, taken aback. “Of course you did.” Embarrassment seized him, and he flushed, suddenly unable to meet Spock’s eyes. 

“Our sleep cycles coincided throughout the separation, and whenever I meditated, our link communicated your state of mind to me.” Spock felt a flicker of anxiety; McCoy could perceive it clearly. “I greatly wished to spend that time in close contact with you, and your desire was clear. I hope you do not feel I have committed an intrusion.”

“I don’t guess it matters much if I do. You keep on intruding anyway.” McCoy felt exposed and that made him surly, but he trusted Spock would know he didn’t really mean it. Hell, he was still lying in the hobgoblin’s arms, wasn’t he? 

Spock gave him a look that mingled both mild alarm and faint mortification. “Doctor, I offered to accompany you to New Vulcan if you wished to terminate the mind-link, but you never--”

 _To hell with being a prude._ McCoy cleared his throat, gruff. “Shut up and kiss me, you green-blooded--”

Spock silenced him thoroughly with a slow and teasing press of lips, taking advantage of his words to steal inside, leading with his tongue. It tickled McCoy’s and withdrew, inviting his response. His head spinning, McCoy followed, feeling the still-unfamiliar blurring of self as Spock’s mind opened to his and he felt his kiss as though the nerves experiencing it were his own.

_I have missed you, Leonard. It proved significantly more challenging to win arguments with other Vulcans._

McCoy growled into the kiss, pushing him over on his back. Again, the quicksilver flicker that was Spock’s amusement brightened the link between them, and Spock let himself be pushed, satisfied to feel McCoy’s weight on his chest. Their thighs tangled and they sighed as one at the perfect fit, pressure in just the right places. 

Then everything went sleek and hot, and McCoy all but lost his words. Every sweep of hand and lip brought a cascade of sensory information. It was very like the dreams, except more so, full of little details like the strong, steady beat of Spock’s heart, a little low and on the wrong side, and the oddness of his body heat-- cooler than a human but still warm, comfortable to touch and press against even inside the insulating goose down. This was real in both body and mind, and with that knowledge came satisfaction and pleasure, richened by its transmission between the two made one: logic and emotion mingled in perfect balance, each completing the other.

McCoy drew back for a moment, needing to contain and integrate this new insight within the part that was fully himself. This was why the link had formed; each mind had sensed its complement and reached out, blending together without need for will. 

Spock’s approval warmed him without speech, and his hands slid under McCoy’s shirt, finding skin. McCoy sighed, nuzzling along Spock’s jaw, admiring the upward sweep of cheekbone and brow, echoed by the elegant shell of his ear. He nibbled his way upward, slow and lazy, the coppery tang of Spock’s skin on his tongue as Spock’s hands explored him, finding and noting places where his nerves sang with pleasure, filing them away for future sensual reference. 

“Walking computer,” McCoy accused him without rancor, lipping the words amorously against his skin. “Never had any idea a database would be so useful when it came to having sex.”

“My intent is to learn how best to inundate you with pleasurable sensations until you forget you possess the power of speech,” Spock teased, and turned to bite at his wrist. “It will be a great relief.”

“Is that so?” McCoy took a gamble and captured Spock’s hand, nuzzling along his fingers with lips and tongue, pleased when Spock uttered a tiny, abortive sound, almost a whimper. “I’ll be damned. It _is_ a relief,” he drawled with satisfaction, and sucked Spock’s fingers into his mouth, fellating them shamelessly. 

Spock’s cock firmed against him, breath harsh in his throat, so McCoy licked the pads, then dragged his tongue down between the fingers, deep-throating them. That made Spock whimper again and thrust upward, his mouth falling open on a silent cry. 

“More where that came from,” McCoy promised, setting his hand over the straining ridge in Spock’s trousers and giving it a firm squeeze. Spock made a throttled growl low in his throat, his eyes coming open, and he caught McCoy’s arms and rolled them, trapping McCoy beneath his body as a great groundswell of pure fire roared through him.

“That’s more like it--” McCoy started, but then Spock heaved, muscles convulsing, and shot off the bed to crash very unelegantly onto the floor, still tangled in the coverlet. 

“What the _hell_ \-- was that a cramp, are you all right?” McCoy jumped up in haste, snatching for a tricorder, forgetting sex completely. Spock lay trembling for a long moment, his eyes hooded, then scrambled to his knees, carefully extricating himself from the bedding. 

McCoy felt as if he’d just had a bucket of ice water dumped over his head; the sudden absence of Spock in his head left him cold and empty, their link silent when he groped for it to try to see what was the matter.

“Forgive me, doctor.” Spock drew himself up, painfully stiff, reaching for his shoes. 

“Am I not supposed to touch you that way? Shit, Spock, you’ve got to tell me things like that ahead of time. I’m sorry.” McCoy hastily activated the tricorder and gave Spock a once-over; the readings weren’t quite right, but nothing seemed too alarming. More androgen production than usual, but you’d expect that during a make-out session. A minor serotonin anomaly, maybe, but nothing big enough to lead to clinical depression in a human. It might just be--

“Doctor, I am afraid I must meditate on what just happened.” Spock was ramrod stiff, the most wooden and withdrawn McCoy had ever seen him. “I must withdraw now to do so, but I ask you to reserve an hour tomorrow evening for me. We will discuss this then.”

“What’s wrong with right now? Look, I’m sorry,” McCoy babbled, panic and embarrassment half-choking him as Spock beat a hasty retreat, still barefoot. “Whatever was wrong with what I did, I can change it--” He never slowed down, not even to put his fucking shoes back on. “Goddammit, Spock, don’t walk out of here that way. You can’t leave me hanging without letting me know we can fix this!” 

“I require time to prepare my thoughts, doctor,” Spock said, with no more inflection than a robot, and the door shut between them.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting now for all y'all who were so kind in the comments, but were worrying "WTF is wrong with Spock?!" ;-)
> 
> For more details, if you haven't seen the TOS episodes, WHAT ARE YOU WAITING FOR???? GO WATCH ST:TOS S2 E1 "Amok Time!" *FLAIL*

McCoy swore and swore till he was out of breath, and he would have kept going until he was hoarse, but he remembered M’Benga’s file before his voice gave out on him. Maybe there was something in there that’d tell him why a full-grown adult Vulcan who’d seemed to be firing on all thrusters and ready to go would suddenly fly into a fight-or-flight panic the second his lover laid a hand on his dick-- and if the file didn’t tell him anything useful, then fuck his own pride; he was going to wake Uhura up and grill her about sex with Spock until he had some goddamned answers. 

Now he was glad he still had his uniform on. Jamming his feet into his boots, he stalked down the corridor with such a thunderous expression on his face that more than one crewman squeaked aloud and scuttled out of his way.

He stamped into sickbay without answering any of the cordial hellos from second-shift staff, latching the door of his office and slamming down into his seat. He’d drunk all his Saurian brandy, but there was some of Scotty’s terrible homebrew in the safe, so he poured himself a stiff double before he sat down with the damned file folder. It was going to take a full-fledged Romulan attack to keep him from reading every word.

The first half of the file seemed to be case notes-- patients of M’Benga’s with minor androgen and estrogen imbalances, complaining of irritability, and his bafflement when he was immediately removed from their treatment without explanation. Then McCoy found one regarding a Vulcan who came in with a serious hormonal imbalance, life-threatening, who actually picked up a diagnostic robot and threw it through a bio-bed screen, and his eyebrows nearly climbed all the way to his hairline. 

He flipped forward through the case histories, impatient, until he found M’Benga’s final summation, two terse pages. There was a definite pattern. Vulcans came in, displayed hormonal imbalances, were removed from his care, and when he saw them again, their social status had changed. Singles were no more. Betrothals had become marriages and many of the women had conceived children. He speculated the hormonal complaint had to do with reproduction or marriage, but hadn’t been able to gather much definite information for a long while. The Vulcan who had destroyed hospital equipment broke the pattern wide open, though; his treatment had been so urgent M’Benga had witnessed some of it, though it wasn’t officially recorded in the copy of the Vulcan’s medical transcript that appeared earlier in the file. 

In his personal log, M’Benga noted a woman had been called to assist the affected male-- a civilian woman with no medical expertise, as far as he had been able to determine. The last M’Benga knew of the violent male Vulcan, he was hastily sequestered with her and half a dozen elders from his clan, all drawn together in great haste and taken from their work to some sort of wedding ceremony out in the desert. He had overheard words he did not know-- _plak tow, pon farr_ \-- words that made no sense to McCoy. The Vulcans had refused to translate them for M'Benga. 

He pondered over M’Benga’s final paragraph: ‘I am left to theorize that adult Vulcans are subject to a traumatic form of sexual hormonal imbalance, perhaps in some ways analogous to a highly accelerated and intense hormonal puberty. I hesitate to postulate that it requires sexual congress to resolve, but evidence suggests marriage and childbearing frequently follow its onset. Certainly discussing this illness is regarded as a social taboo of the most serious kind; it is rigorously hidden from outsiders and I believe it is not too strong a word to say that the emotional outbursts symptomatic of its progression are regarded as deeply shameful.’

McCoy scratched his fingers through his hair, disturbed. Spock hadn’t seemed particularly irritable earlier tonight, though it was hard to be sure since he’d just returned from his stint planetside. It did seem possible he might be ashamed of his sexual response to McCoy, though; he’d shut down tighter than a bull’s ass at fly time. The androgen levels and the serotonin…. That was consistent with the early stages of this whatever-it-might-be. But why hadn’t Spock said anything to him?

McCoy swore again and keyed his computer. “Lt. Uhura, I hate to bother you at this time of night, but I have a serious question.”

She appeared after a moment, looking a little rumpled-- and a little resentful, too.

“Believe it or not, I’m asking for medical reasons, not just personal ones.” McCoy sighed; there wasn’t any easy way to say this, so he just spit it out. “Did Spock ever… seem to get really irritable, maybe even angry, and want sex afterward? I mean, assuming you two ever got that far.” A medical doctor ought to be capable of more composure than he could muster, but all McCoy could manage was a brief illustrative hand gesture reminiscent of erection, and he turned red as a beet in spite of himself.

She scowled at him, suspicious. “No,” she said, the word stretching out into doubt. “Our sex life was fine. More than satisfactory. Nothing like you describe.” Her narrowed eyes told him no more specific details would be forthcoming. 

“If you remember a time when anything like that happened, let me know, OK? I’ve been going through M’Benga’s notes on Vulcan biology and I found some unexpected information about hormonal disorders that puzzled me. I just wanted to consult you so I could be prepared if anything like that cropped up.” McCoy hedged as calmly as he could.

“At two in the morning.” She wasn’t buying a word of it. “Did you two have a fight? Over sex? Do you need me to talk to him?”

“NO! No.” McCoy held up both palms, pleading. _Not yet, anyway. Hopefully never._ “He’d probably be pissed as hell at me for saying anything to you about it, and you know how impossible he gets when he’s mad.” He hesitated. In for a penny, in for a pound. “He never said anything to you about a sex-related condition called _plak tow_ , or maybe _pon farr?_ M’Benga mentioned them in his case notes from Vulcan, but he doesn’t know much.”

“Spock never mentioned those words to me, no.” She frowned. “Doesn’t _‘plak’_ mean blood in Vulcan? Maybe it’s menstruation.”

McCoy seized on that eagerly. “You know, I bet you’re right.” _So that meant blood, and ‘tow’ was fever. Blood fever?_ Maybe female Vulcans went into some kind of estrus when they were fertile, and the males had to breed them then if they wanted children? The irritability could be some kind of psychic PMS. 

Still, McCoy didn’t like the sound of it at all. He thought fleetingly of the wildfire lust he’d sensed just before Spock shut him out. That didn’t add up. “I’m just gonna bite the bullet and ask him myself tomorrow.” He tried again to soothe her. “Thanks, Nyota. Sorry to pester you in the middle of the night. You know how I hate to admit he knows something I don’t.”

“Yes, you should ask him. That sounds like a good idea.” He’d hit the mark that time; she was already calming down. “Apology accepted.” She shrugged a little, her dark hair falling over her face. “He can be a tough nut to crack sometimes. Good luck.”

“Thanks.” McCoy exhaled with relief, then cut the connection. 

“Computer,” he keyed it again, tapping his fingertips together thoughtfully as he stared at Bob. “Give me a full etymological and social analysis of the Vulcan medical terms _plak tow_ and _pon farr_."

“Working.”

Ten minutes later, McCoy sat glaring down at two sheets of printout, half a dozen words circled on each one. _Plak tow_ was definitely blood fever; the translation there was pretty straightforward and didn’t give a lot of options. The closest he could come for _pon farr_ was ‘time of mating’ or maybe ‘time for breeding.’ 

It cross-referenced to something called _koon-ut-kal-if-fee_ , and the literal translation seemed to say a couple could either get married or they could challenge each other to a fight, but McCoy couldn’t dig up any more details about that. When he queried cultural databases for any information about any of the above-- marriage, courtship rituals, divorce, anything and everything he could think of that might touch on the subject, he got nowhere. “Vulcan marriages were formally registered in the official hall of records in ShiKahr,” and other nonsense of that nature was all he could dig out of the records, nothing even remotely helpful. 

It was 0600 before he knew it, and Chapel tapped hesitantly at his door.

“Have you been working in there all night?” She looked at the crumpled paper in his wastebasket and on his desk, and at his red eyes and rumpled hair. “Your date didn’t go well?”

McCoy deflated. “That’s an understatement,” he muttered. “Don’t ever ask a Vulcan to watch _Casablanca_.” He went back to his desk, gathering the scattered printouts, and shoved them into the confidentiality disintegrator. Time to drop back ten and punt.

“Can you cover my shift for me? I’ll owe you one. Call me if anything big comes in.” Dammit, he’d said that too often lately. “I’m almost done here. When I am, I’ll lie down and grab some sleep.” 

“All right, but I’m going to check after an hour and make sure you’re actually sleeping.” She shook a finger at him before letting herself out.

McCoy huffed at the door, snagged a new piece of flimsiplast and a stylus, and started to sum up what he’d discovered. It wasn’t nearly enough to put his mind at rest.

  * Illness-- _pon farr, plak tow_ But why wouldn’t he stay if he needs sex? Could have had all the god damned sex he wanted QUIZ M’BENGA FOR ANY ADD’L DETAILS. 
  * Menstruation/heat cycle/psychic PMS (!) 
  * Marriage-- Cultural taboo on sex beforehand? Possibly not? Cf. Uhura 
  * Fighting-- Well, we do plenty of that. Maybe if we fight we can’t marry? Either/or? Cf. Uhura again goddammit. ????? 
  * Homophobia-- Maybe. 
  * Sex for pleasure = illogical? 



He sat, tapping his stylus next to that last item and chewing his lip. How could homosexuality be strictly logical in Vulcan terms? Sex was for breeding, right? Maybe he had to do the curing puberty thing with a female for it to work?

  * Time of mating-- Maybe he’s got a biological/cultural imperative to go make little green babies and we can’t (ARTIFICIAL INSEMINATION/SURROGATE?) 
  * Offense at something random and human, I don’t know what. Maybe Vulcans = allergic to Louis Armstrong, Ingrid Bergman 



Now he was just getting ridiculous; he’d been up all night and he was punchy, hungry, embarrassed, hurt, let-down, afraid-- and more than a little pissed off. McCoy rubbed his eyes till he saw stars. One thing was sure-- if Spock trusted McCoy the way he’d expected to be trusted, he ought to have sat down and discussed whatever it was rationally, like an adult, instead of running off like a terrified virgin who never knew dicks existed and planned to join a convent at the first opportunity now that she’d found out.

  * Maybe he figured out he doesn’t want that kind of a relationship with me. Epiphany. 
  * Is it over? 



McCoy scrawled the last three words heavily on the sheet, gripping the stylus so hard his fingers hurt. He didn’t know. He reached to touch the pendant of Spock’s necklace as he stared at Bob without really seeing him, probing tentatively at the place in his mind where the Vulcan’s presence usually lived. That got him exactly nowhere. He didn’t have the ability to reach Spock’s mind on his own, especially not through whatever barriers the impossible green-blooded sonofabitch had put up between their minds; he might as well have tried to light a candle with pyrokinesis.

Dammit, if he didn’t lie down soon and get some sleep, Chapel would knock him flat on his ass with a sedative, and then he wouldn’t wake up in time to grill M’Benga about his case notes before he had to meet with Spock.

Sighing, McCoy shoved the new sheet of notes into the disintegrator and went to set up his emergency cot. By the time Christine came to check on him he was lying down, but he only slept fitfully. Spock never came into his dreams.


	14. Chapter 14

“...Anyway, that’s what happened. You can check the readings I took.” McCoy displayed his tricorder, feeling gruff and embarrassed. 

“I have to confess I’m surprised by this.” M’Benga looked rueful. “When you said you planned to take care of him, I thought you knew a lot more about what he needed than I did.”

McCoy could have cursed his own blithe assumptions. “Yeah, well, hindsight is 20/20.” He grimaced. “The bastard could have told somebody.”

“Vulcans don’t reveal personal information readily.” M’Benga accepted the tricorder and studied it. “Those readings are only a little off normal, but they could represent the condition in its earliest stages, I think.” He pursed his lips. “If it even is a _bona fide_ medical condition-- I wouldn’t think so if I hadn’t seen Sivek ransack an exam room in a fit of rage, then spied on the healers who took him away from me and treated him until he got past the crisis and they realized I was still hanging around with my eyes and ears open. I can’t tell you a lot more than that, Leonard. Everything I know is down in my notes.” He glanced up. “You say Spock was having regular sexual contact with Lt. Uhura?”

“She implied it, anyway. She didn’t have any complaints.”

“And then you?”

“He was visiting my dreams telepathically while he was planetside, and yeah, we got up to some pretty good shenanigans that way. Aside from having imaginary sex while we were sleeping light years apart, nothing seemed off.” McCoy flushed. “We hadn’t got around to doing much in person. I assumed we were working up to it, but….” He shrugged, helpless. “You think this behavior is normal for him?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen a Vulcan engage in a sexual relationship with a human before I came aboard the Enterprise. I think Ambassador Sarek was the only one who’d tried to make a go of it, or at least he was until Spock came of age. I don’t think there _is_ such a thing as normal for something that rare, and Spock’s a half-breed. He’s a special case all his own."

M’Benga tilted his head, thoughtful. “Your theory about Vulcan estrus is intriguing. It would explain some of the observations I’ve made, and it might even be called blood fever. But I’m not sure how it applies to Spock in this case.” M’Benga tapped his stylus against his teeth, thoughtful. “I suppose it’s possible he feels a responsibility to reproduce, given Nero’s act of genocide and the current rarity of the Vulcan race. But you started your relationship after the genocide, so if he believed that was a deal-breaker, I don’t think he’d have taken up with you in the first place. It wouldn’t be logical.” 

M’Benga and McCoy shared a wry chuckle at that, and McCoy topped up their coffee while M’Benga studied the tricorder again, shaking his head. “Leonard, Spock’s a half-breed, a genetic mule. Both his conception and gestation required considerable medical intervention. It’s unlikely he’ll be able to sire children regardless whether he wants to. He’s bound to know he has a very low chance of success even with medical assistance.”

“Doesn’t mean he wouldn’t try. And Uhura proves he’s not actually gay. Maybe I was just an experiment that failed.”

M’Benga laid a sympathetic hand on McCoy’s shoulder. “I’ve never known for sure whether Vulcans engage in homosexual relationships.” He withdrew his hand and started to pace; it seemed to help the man think. “Doesn’t mean they don’t. They prefer not to talk about sex or make public displays of affection greater than touching fingers, not even if you know a couple is married and producing children. Family members of all genders touch fingers whenever they want to and I thought friends did as well; it’s a greeting that indicates polite affection. But maybe the people I saw touching fingers who weren’t related were couples and I didn’t realize. After all, I was only sure some of my heterosexual patients were couples because they produced children together. Vulcan sexuality is a mystery to everyone but Vulcans.”

McCoy slumped in his seat, weary and discouraged. “Well, I’m gonna pry the details of that mystery out of him if it kills me.” 

“And afterward you won’t tell me about it either, I’m guessing.” M’Benga gave McCoy a wry look. 

“As much of it is going into his medical records as a non-Vulcan physician needs to know.” McCoy glared at Spock in absentia. “Where it ought to be already, damn it.”

“I think the Vulcans I saw with this condition were anomalies, Leonard,” M’Benga fixed him with a grave stare. “They were all young adults. I think either they didn’t recognize the condition at first, or they were out of pocket somehow, caught off-guard, like Sivek. I think Vulcans prefer to deal with this using social mechanisms other than medical science. That’s why the details don’t go into their medical publications.”

“It’s going in them this time.” McCoy slapped his palms on the table. “Thanks, doctor.”

McCoy’s communicator chirped.

“Bones, answer me a question.”

“What is it, Jim?” He tried to sound chipper and on-the-ball. God only knew why.

“Weren’t you going to handle whatever it was that made Spock want to take off to New Vulcan at the drop of a hat? I’ve got his formal request on my desk, but I’ve also got orders to proceed at maximum warp to relieve the Endeavor. We’ve had our recovery time; now it’s our turn to take up sentry duty again. They’ve been in a couple of ugly skirmishes this past week, and their engines need major maintenance. If they get pounced on again before we arrive, they might not make it. Nobody else is close enough to step in. Can you eliminate the conflict, or do I need to get creative?” 

McCoy swore under his breath. Bad things happened when Jim got creative. “I’ll have to get back to you as soon as I can, Jim. I’m on my way to talk to Spock as soon as I go off-shift.”

“Make it fast, Bones.”


	15. Chapter 15

McCoy paused to check himself in the mirror-- red eyed and ratty, but he couldn’t do much other than drag a comb through his hair. It would have to do. He set aside the impulse to have a belt of old fashioned courage; better not to dull his wits with alcohol. 

“Computer. Locate Commander Spock.”

“Commander Spock is in his quarters.”

The corridors were abuzz, packed with people moving between their duty shifts. McCoy found himself welcoming the slight delay the congestion caused, but they still didn’t keep him from arriving in front of Spock’s quarters less than five minutes after leaving Sickbay.

He squared his shoulders and hit the intercom. “Spock, it’s Leonard.” 

A dismaying pause greeted him, but he wasn’t about to budge. His temper was burning on a slow fuse, and he thought it might be just about ready to explode. 

“This better be good, Spock,” he muttered just as the door slid open. The place was black as pitch inside, again.

“Lights, up 15 percent.” He stepped in as the illumination increased, casting grim shadows that took on the sullen maroon hue of dried blood. Spock knelt before his meditation idol, fingers steepled, his face saturnine and inexpressive. 

He felt for his tricorder and took a quick scan, grimacing at the results. The hormone levels were a lot worse than before; whatever this stuff was, it worked fast. The equivalent of adrenaline was flooding Spock’s body; it was a wonder he could even manage to sit still with all that racing around his circulatory system.

“What’s going on, Spock?”

“I have prepared a data disk for your reference, doctor, containing the information you require. It is on the desk. Please take it and go.” Spock’s voice was as taut as he’s ever heard it, thin with strain. “It should make clear why a relationship between us is no longer feasible.”

McCoy drew a slow breath, trying not to fly off the handle. One of them needed to be reasonable, and apparently it wasn’t going to be Spock this time. 

“Is it anything do with the hormonal imbalance you’re displaying?” McCoy kept his voice gentle as he laid his hand lightly on Spock’s forehead; he was burning up. He winced at the heat. Spock flinched away, his eyes tight-shut. McCoy stared at him without moving, mind racing. He couldn’t sense anything from Spock, just empty blankness, all that remained since he’d withdrawn himself from the link. “Are you staying hydrated? You’re perspiring too much.”

Spock jerked his head savagely in the negative and McCoy slowly withdrew his hand, trying not to feel hurt-- failing. He rocked back on his heels, baffled. 

Spock’s eyes opened, looking weary and dull. Every line of him was stiff with tension, so much that he very nearly vibrated with it. “The data disk contains adequate information to answer all pertinent questions.” He paused, but McCoy didn’t move, so he lifted his gaze, and a hint of desperation crept into his voice. “Please leave now, doctor. I require this time for meditation.” 

That was it; McCoy knew that was all he was getting. Spock was as tight-lipped as an Aldebaran shellmouth. 

“This isn’t over.” McCoy waved the disk at him. “I’ll go read this, then we’ll talk about it later. I want you in my sickbay at 0900 tomorrow for a full physical. I’ll go to Jim and pull CMO rank if I have to. Be there.” He let himself out.

McCoy plugged the disk into a padd and went down to the mess hall, getting himself a plate of something vaguely edible and choosing a table where he could put his back to the wall so he could ensure medical confidentiality as he reviewed the records. He jammed a bud into his ear and started playback.

Half an hour later when the information ended, he realized he was sitting still with his fork in the air, and had been for no telling how long; the bite of syntho protein impaled on the fork was ice cold. He made himself take the bite, chew, and swallow, but he couldn’t taste it; it might as well have been boot-leather. 

The medical facts of the case were bad enough-- sudden onset of a hormonal, sexual heat that had to be resolved with either mating or killing an opponent in combat-- with an outside chance that Spock might be able to squeak through it alive with enough meditation? It sounded like the plot of a lousy holodrama-- but what was really killing him was Spock’s behavior. 

Obviously this was why Spock had been willing to date someone in the first place; his wife was dead and Vulcans all but extinct. His chances of finding a Vulcan mate were so low they didn’t even register. He probably never would’ve looked at a human if he hadn’t known he was going to be forced to choose between death and taking a partner. 

It hurt to know Spock had turned to him out of sheer biological expediency when things didn’t work out with Uhura. But it hurt even worse to be rejected in Spock’s time of need. 

Better death than life with Leonard McCoy. 

“How fucking logical is _that?_ ” McCoy sputtered, unable to silence himself. Maybe Spock and Jocelyn should hook up and share war stories.

God damn it. He could still remember those shared dreams as clearly as if he’d lived them in his waking life. Spock, dark shining hair tousled, expression deeply absorbed as he kissed his way downward along McCoy’s belly, eyes rising to lock with McCoy’s as he slowly lowered his mouth onto him, then sank all the way down. Spock reaching tenderly to caress his cheek, sharing the sensation of pleasure when McCoy returned the favor, so careful not to clutch him too hard and hurt him in a moment of climax.

He’d come to believe the dreams were all real, that Spock was there in them with him consciously, deliberately choosing to share those experiences across the boundaries of space that separated them… but he couldn’t reconcile that caring, giving lover with the stone-hard Vulcan façade he’d just shattered on down in the crew quarters. Or with the fact that Spock was, apparently, prepared to die if he couldn’t beat the thing to New Vulcan and seek relief from a stranger.

This time when he came back to himself, Lt. Uhura was sitting a few tables away, looking at him with concern. From the expression on her face, his own could be read like a child’s picture book.

She rose, her eyes shining with tears, but didn’t say anything. She just came to stand at his side for a moment, setting her hand on his shoulder and giving it a squeeze. Yeah. If anybody else knew anything at all about this particular level of hell, it was Nyota.

He set his hand on top of hers, returning the squeeze, and she gave him a sympathetic half-smile. There weren’t any words, and they both knew it. She turned and left, and McCoy stared down at his stone-cold tray, his stomach twisting with revulsion.

 _Shit._ Time was wasting while he sat here with his thumb up his ass, wrapped up in self-pity.

“McCoy to Kirk,” he said, activating his communicator. “About that problem, Jim. It’s worse than I thought, and it looks like I won’t be able to handle it myself. How creative are you prepared to get? Are there any ships nearby that could convey a passenger to the requested facility? There’s not much time.”

“I’ll see what I can find.” Jim hesitated. “How much is not much?”

“About eight days, give or take. It’s hard to tell.”

“That’s cutting it close even if we didn’t have to be somewhere else.” He could hear the wheels turning in Jim’s mind. “I’m going to need a full briefing, Bones.”

He rode the turbolift to the bridge and handed Jim the disk, flopping down into the ready-room chair while he waited, gauging the captain’s process through the information based on the severity of any sudden explosions of breath-- or occasional profanity. When Jim lifted his eyes to stare, McCoy stared right back.

“I thought the two of you were together,” Jim hazarded in what, for him, passed as a relatively delicate manner. “Can’t you…?”

Trust Jim Kirk to go right for the jugular. 

“We’ve dated, sure. Haven’t done much.” McCoy bit the words off, clipped and irritable. “Not _that_ , anyway. I thought we were about to when he turned tail and ran. Not that I blame him for not wanting to be tied to me. I’m not Vulcan. I’m not good enough.” He got up, wishing Jim would stash some booze in here; he needed a shot now if he’d ever needed one. “He’s made it clear he doesn’t want my help.”

“But if it’s a choice between, well, _that_ with you and dying….”

“Believe me, it’s flattering to hear you’d choose _that_ with _me_ , as you so eloquently put it, rather than fry yourself to death on a lethal hormonal surge.” McCoy felt his temper escaping control in spite of the world; he itched to knock some sense into Kirk’s thick head. He stamped straight up to the desk and slammed down his hands, shoving himself right into Jim’s face; he couldn’t stop his voice from rising to a bellow. “Next time I go to a singles bar, I’ll know exactly what to say! ‘One out of two of my dearest friends would rather sleep with me than die, ladies, so who’s first in line to go back to my room this evening?’”

“Bones.” Jim held up both hands, placating, and rolled his chair back an inch or three. “Do you think he’s really dying? For _sex?_ ”

“I haven’t got him down to sickbay for a full examination yet.” McCoy pulled away and stalked the carpet in front of the desk, pacing like a tiger. “I have him scheduled for first thing tomorrow, but his endocrine system is already kicking into overdrive. He went from mildly elevated androgen and serotonin levels yesterday to severe ones today, plus my readings show enough adrenaline equivalent running wild in his system to choke a Missouri mule. I think the eight day estimate is realistic; even if I tie him down--” McCoy hesitated, feeling sick, his heart in his throat, but he was telling the truth, and dancing around it wouldn’t change a thing. 

“Tie him down?” Jim sat up straight. _”Spock?”_

“Damn right, Spock. It’ll come to that, mark my words. If those particular neurochemicals keep increasing at this rate, he’ll have to be locked up in a few days if we don’t want him to go insane and either kill or rape the first person unfortunate enough to wander too close to him. As I say, even if I tie him down and pump him full of sedatives, he can’t go on that way for long. His brain will stew in its own juices and his whole autonomic nervous system will turn to mush. You can’t regenerate that much nerve tissue; you’ll never restore life function after that.”

“So I have to choose between Spock’s life… and the crew of the Endeavor.” Jim stared at McCoy in horror. “They’re running on empty. If they get hit again, they won’t make it, Bones. We’re already halfway there. It’d take us ten days to get to New Vulcan and back. Who knows what the Klingons might do without anybody here to watch out for the colonists on our side of the line?”

McCoy swallowed hard. “430 lives on the Endeavor, plus God knows how many planetside.…”

“Versus Spock’s. If I didn’t have this fucking braid on my sleeve, Bones, I know who I’d choose.” Jim shook his head, agonized, and stood up, planting his fingertips on the table and leaning right into McCoy’s space. “But I can’t just let the crew of the Endeavor die, or be responsible for starting an all-out war, and you know it. Can’t you try again to convince him, then just, you know, both of you... take one for the team?”

White-hot rage blazed, and McCoy didn’t even see it coming; he stood there in a daze, watching in slow motion as his own arm swung and his clenched fist clipped Jim Kirk neatly on the point of his chin. The captain went up on his tiptoes and just kept going back and over, fortunately missing the chair as time resumed its normal speed and he collapsed onto the deck with a distressing thud.

“OUCH!” McCoy felt a proximal phalanx give way under the impact, and maybe a couple of metacarpals, too. “Jesus Christ!” He shook his hand, then clutched it tight against the agony, stumbling around the desk to check on Jim, who lay there dazed, his eyes foggy with slow-fading incomprehension. McCoy reached out with his left hand and helped him struggle to sit up.

“Did you just hit me?” Jim blinked disbelief.

“No. Space debris rocked the ship,” McCoy lied. “Fuck!” His aching hand didn’t want to work the tricorder. 

“You hit me,” Jim marveled, groping at his chin and finding the bruise already spreading there. “You really hit me. Ow!”

“Let’s get down to sickbay,” McCoy winced, cradling his broken hand against his belly. “So I can have one of the staff help you with that.”

M’Benga was there, and he patched up McCoy’s hand, his eyes shifting back and forth as he obviously made a quick conclusion based on the placement of the bruise and the matching broken hand, but he kept his mouth shut as he ran the bone-knitter.

“Got this for you. It’ll supplement the partial report you gave me,” McCoy passed over the disk. “This falls under medical confidentiality rules, but since you’re one of his primary physicians, you get it on a need-to-know basis.” He took the protoplaser and started work on Jim’s chin. Loose teeth, too… no concussion, thank heaven.

M’Benga scanned the information quickly, raising a brow. “Doctor, forgive the personal question, but at any time in the past have you formed a mental link with Commander Spock?”

“By accident some time back. He said we could have it cut but we didn’t ever get around to it.” McCoy flushed. “It’s gone quiet now, but yeah, we’re linked up.”

“It’s extremely unlike you to lift your hand to a friend in anger.” M’Benga eyed him, speculative. “I believe you’re being subconsciously affected by Commander Spock’s emotional state despite his attempts at shielding, doctor.” 

He advanced, holding out a diagnostic monitor even though McCoy raised both hands to ward him off. “Onto the bed, Dr. McCoy. Your testosterone and adrenaline levels are abnormally high.”

McCoy submitted with ill grace. “So, what’s the verdict?” he demanded, as Jim peeked over M’Benga’s shoulder and got in his way, generally making a nuisance out of himself.

“The adrenaline surge is fading; could be from the… incident that led to those broken fingers, or the pain of breaking them,” M’Benga stepped carefully around making the altercation official. “Mildly elevated testosterone, DHEA, DST… nothing alarming, at least not yet. Serotonin levels normal,” he mused. “As that appears to be the primary cause of fatality in Vulcan neurophysical breakdown, the absence of the symptom is a good sign. I’d say you’re pissed off, probably pretty horny. You might experience some temporary hair loss. Nothing worse than that, at least not yet.” He grinned at McCoy suddenly, amused. “Psychic PMS. Want some chocolate?”

McCoy growled annoyance in spite of himself. 

“I’ll have Uhura run a scan for courier ships or anyone else we might commandeer to send Spock where he needs to go,” Kirk went to a terminal and started tapping in orders. “Bad luck we don’t have any warp capacity shuttles aboard; maybe the Endeavor has one of the prototypes. I’ll just--” he stopped in mid-sentence, glaring at the monitor.

“What is it, Jim?”

“Someone’s redirected our course. Shit. It had to be Spock; we’re headed for New Vulcan.” Kirk lifted his head, eyes narrowed. “I don’t think this will wait till morning. Doctor McCoy, I want you to accompany me to Mr. Spock’s quarters. Bring whatever you think you’ll need.”

McCoy bit his lip and grabbed a first aid kit, some sedatives, and the best hand-held medical scanner Starfleet was willing to buy.


	16. Chapter 16

Spock answered the door with a lot more alacrity than he’d shown earlier, but he was out of breath, barely clinging to composure. He pulled back with an effort when he saw the captain waiting, eyes darting to McCoy. His face hardened and he drew himself up, stepping back stiffly.

“Mr. Spock,” Jim gave him a thorough once-over. “Can you tell me why you countermanded my orders to make best progress to the neutral zone to replace the Endeavor, and instead redirected the Enterprise to New Vulcan?”

Spock drew himself up even tighter, but did not speak.

“Do you deny making the change?” Jim eyed him sidelong, stepping farther into the cabin. McCoy took the opportunity to wave the medi-scanner over him and take some readings; Spock’s eyes narrowed at him, but he did not comment. 

“On the contrary, it is quite possible I did, though I do not remember.” Spock lifted his eyes to a point on the wall, and despite the silence of the link McCoy knew he was retreating into himself, remote, behind steely control. 

McCoy clucked his tongue; Spock had enough stress chemicals in his system to equal an entire squadron of burned-out bomb disposal technicians with PTSD. Kirk shot a look at him, but he too left McCoy out of the conversation for the moment.

“Dr. McCoy shared your biological data-- under my direct orders,” Kirk exaggerated delicately, but McCoy let it pass; the point was moot. If he hadn’t done it voluntarily, Kirk would have forced it out of him. This was too big to hide. 

“I want to know why you won’t do the logical thing and resolve your issue. Do whatever you have to. There has to be _somebody_ aboard you can accept who’s willing to help.” He didn’t _quite_ look at McCoy, but it was a small mercy. Jim drummed his fingers against the wall for a minute, then blurted out what was on his mind. “Dammit, Spock, I’ll help you myself if that’s what you want, but I won’t lose you to this.” 

McCoy nearly dropped his scanner in disbelief. He’d never heard Jim Kirk express even the faintest sexual interest in a male. 

Spock did not rise to the bait. “Your offer, while appreciated, will not be useful. Regarding the course change, I accept your word that I did it, but I do not remember doing it. I may do it again, if I am not restrained. Captain, lock me away. I do not wish to be seen.”

“Spock--”

“The Vulcan understands. It is not for outworlders to know.” He kept staring at the wall as though the answers to the great questions of life were written there on a microdot. “It is a matter of great shame, captain.”

“It’s just the birds and the bees, Spock.” Jim shook his head, exasperated. “I know for a fact you’ve slept with Uhura. Should I call her dow--”

Before he could finish the word Spock lunged at him, eyes blazing, knotting a fist in his tunic and hoisting him against the bulkhead. “It is my choice to make. Not yours,” he hissed. Bones heard Jim’s ribs creak as Spock leaned in, his arm still forcing Jim aloft. “You will not involve her in this.”

Suicidal insanity seemed to be the only remaining option, so McCoy heaved a sigh, stepped in, and took Jim away from Spock. “Let him go.” The first touch of his hand, as he tried to pry Spock’s fingers loose, made the Vulcan draw back as if he had grasped a live coal, retreating to lean against the opposite wall, absently rubbing his hand where McCoy had touched him. 

“We shield this time with ritual and customs shrouded in antiquity. You humans have no conception. It strips our minds from us. I had hoped I would be spared, but the ancient drives are too strong….” Spock shook his head, and just for an instant McCoy felt his shields flicker, felt his agony. “Only a Vulcan can help me. I understand you cannot turn aside from your duty. Please.” His voice went hoarse. “Lock me away. I have no wish to be responsible for what I will do, otherwise.”

Kirk gave McCoy an unreadable look, slowly rubbing his throat. “Both of you have attacked me now. Two of my senior officers in one night,” he remarked, and Spock blinked with alarm. “That’s a new personal best. Maybe I should go see if Scotty wants to make it a trifecta.”

“I had no idea my emotional state was influencing Doctor McCoy.” Spock closed his eyes. “I will endeavor to improve my shielding, but I cannot guarantee success. Still, he is not Vulcan, and thus he should not be much affected. My mother--” he stopped, then began again. “She endured few deleterious psychological effects from her mental link with my father, and those few were temporary.”

“That’s good to hear.” McCoy didn’t feel very reassured. “Spock, I--”

Spock ignored him utterly, turning away and closing him out of the conversation. 

“Captain, I beg you. Take Doctor McCoy and go. Leave me in peace.” His voice very nearly broke. “I cannot-- I will not force him or any other. Go.”

“Damn it, Spock--” McCoy blurted, but the Vulcan did not respond, moving to the center of the small space and dropping to his knees, facing the fire idol. He folded his hands and bent his head.

Jim set his jaw, reluctant, but gave McCoy a curt nod and ushered him to the door, pausing there to look back. “Consider yourself confined to quarters, Mr. Spock. I want you to show up for your medical appointment tomorrow morning. Doctor McCoy, report to me afterward, and we’ll determine whether his condition has progressed far enough to justify locking him up.”

Spock didn’t respond, so Jim palmed the door shut and leaned against it, glaring at the corridor ceiling. 

“Damn it, Bones, it doesn’t make sense.”

“You’re telling me? You should try dating him.” McCoy scrubbed his hand over his face; his eyes felt full of sand, and his skin was damp, almost sticky. Ugh, he could use a shower.

“You look like you need a drink and at least twelve hours’ sleep. Not necessarily in that order.”

“And you’re going to prescribe some of both.” McCoy sighed. He did need sleep; he felt like his brain was stuffed full of steel wool. No, he definitely wasn’t firing on all thrusters. “Must be getting old. Come on.”

“It has to make sense, Bones,” Kirk protested. “It’s Spock.”

“Let me shoot you up with about a half-pint each of testosterone and adrenaline, and we’ll see how much sense you make.” McCoy let Kirk into his quarters and went digging for Scotty’s rotgut. 

“He said he wouldn’t force you.”

“Bastard’s crazy.” McCoy poured Jim two fingers of neat whisky and a smaller swallow for himself; he wasn’t getting drunk when Spock might need him. “We were just getting started on the good stuff. I was willing. Hell, I made the first move.” He felt his face flame, shame catching up with his mouth a little too late. “He ran out on me like a jackrabbit, Jim, and that’s the truth. He just doesn’t want me.” The alcohol hit his sagging brain dead center; even a swallow was too much. He slumped onto his bed and lay back, morose. 

“But it doesn’t make sense. Spock’s not the type to be a cocktease, Bones, and he’s known about this _pon farr_ business since he was nine years old. Why would he lead you on, only to run?”

“Hell if I know.” McCoy considered having another drink in spite of everything. “Why’d Jocelyn run? She’s not half as smart as Spock. But then again, he ran twice as soon. And twice as fast.”

“But why would he say he’s not forcing you into something?” Jim was pacing, ignoring his drink-- which was probably a good idea; the stuff tasted like paint thinner and it might just be peeling the hide off McCoy from the inside out. “You were ready to go. I offered my own ass, but he insists he’d be forcing somebody if he got help. Forcing them how? Forcing what, Bones? I want you to make him tell you.” Jim stood over him. “I don’t think it’s just about sex.”

“Maybe it’s about how brutal the sex is. That summation didn’t sound like he was gonna be singing serenades or romancing a lover with wine and roses. It sounded to me like he needed to fuck somebody as hard and as often as he could for about a week.” McCoy threw his arm over his eyes so he didn’t have to look at Kirk. “This _pon farr_ business is rough stuff, and you know he’s strong as an ox.”

“It’s survivable. His mother went through it more than once.” Jim dismissed him, impatient. “You could handle it. So could Uhura, if it came to that. She’s no smaller than Amanda was.”

McCoy scoffed, circling the drain, so tired he couldn’t think anymore. “Jim, I don’t know what’s in his head. He relegated me to the outer darkness, where there is wailing and gnashing of teeth.” He uncovered his eyes, squinting against the light. “I’ve got to get some rest so I’ll be fit enough to examine him in the morning. If either of us has any brilliant ideas, they’ll keep till then. He’s nowhere near death’s door yet.”

“I’m sorry for what I said earlier, Bones.” Jim wasn’t quite through; he came over and laid a hand on McCoy’s shoulder. “I shouldn’t have, but I’m just so damned…. There’s got to be some way to save him from this. I’d do it myself if he’d let me.”

“Don’t worry about it.” McCoy stretched out his legs and sighed. “You know I’d do it too.”

He never even heard Jim leave.


	17. Chapter 17

Waking up the next morning was an exercise in epic hangover. McCoy thought his head might split open like an overripe watermelon; his lashes tried to gum together, and his mouth tasted like he’d eaten mud-soaked cotton balls. One drink couldn’t account for that, not even if it was Scotty’s homebrew. This was probably psychic backwash, and if he felt this bad, Spock was a lot worse.

Spock.

McCoy forced himself to sit up, cradling his aching head in his hands. He had to get down to sickbay and examine Spock.

One analgesic hypo later, McCoy felt a little more like himself. He blinked at the mirror while the hypo kicked in, taking stock. A little more bloodshot than usual, a little haggard, like his sleep hadn’t done him as much good as it should have, but minimally presentable.

The pendant of his necklace escaped his undershirt and dangled toward the mirror, its blue stone the same gentle shade as a hazy summer sky in Georgia. McCoy caught it in his fist, grimacing. Vulcan and Earth. A little bit of each hidden in the other.

Jim was right. Spock didn’t make any fucking sense. 

He brushed his teeth, thinking idly of Jocelyn. She’d shut him out too, by the end. It’d probably been mostly his fault. She’d spent months complaining how he was always busy with his work, but when he was home, she said he wasn’t any good to be around; always snarking, always griping, finding fault with whatever she did for him. Both sides needed to give and be kind, when you were--

He stared into his own wide eyes, toothpaste foam still dripping from his lips. _Holy shit._

He reached slowly and filled a cup, rinsed his mouth, and watched the water drain away into the recycler. His brain cascaded around him in fragments, settling slowly into a new pattern, and he tried not to jostle it in case the insight that was forming fell away from him, impossible to recapture.

 _When you were married. Spock. The link. The foundation of Vulcan fucking marriage._ The one thing McCoy and Spock had that Spock and Uhura hadn’t. And what had he ever done about it but complain and be difficult? Had he ever told Spock he didn’t want to break the link? No; he never had. Instead, he’d balked at the dream visits-- right before Spock ran. 

He could hear their words sleeting through his head now: _“I need some time to try to get used to this.” “I will give you as much as I can.”_

“You stupid bastard,” McCoy snarled at the mirror. He wasn’t sure whether he meant himself or Spock, and frankly he didn’t give a damn. “We ran outta time.”

He bolted from the bathroom, snatching his uniform shirt on the fly.

Spock’s quarters were empty when he overrode the privacy lock and burst in. It was just before 0900; Spock must already be waiting in sickbay. McCoy shoved his way through the halls to get to the turbolift, then scowled at the wall as it took its own sweet time, pausing on every level to let people step on and off. By the time he burst into sickbay he was out of breath, running on a full head of adrenalin-fueled steam; he didn’t care how many people were listening when he told the blasted Vulcan off. 

But Spock wasn’t there. M’Benga lifted his head, startled, holding a padd and a cup of coffee. “Dr. McCoy?”

“Dammit, where’s Spock?” McCoy snapped. “He’s supposed to be in here for a thorough physical.”

“He hasn’t been in. His appointment was removed from the scheduler.”

“Stubborn fucking martyred sonofabitch!” McCoy swore, startling a shocked stare from Chapel. “Should have locked him up just like he said. Computer, locate Commander Spock!”

“Commander Spock is not aboard the Enterprise.” 

“What the-- Jim!” McCoy yelled at the comm, but before Kirk could answer, the ship rocked with a concussion so savage it knocked them all right off their feet.

“Not now, doctor, we’re under fire.”

“Well, whenever you get time for it, you should eventually spend some time looking around until you figure out Spock’s gone!” The ship rocked again, and McCoy barely caught himself on the edge of a bio-bed. “Prepare for triage, nurse. Let’s get this place ready to take casualties.”

*****

Six hours and a couple of destroyed Klingon ships later, McCoy was putting the finishing touches on reconstructing a shattered jawbone when Jim finally showed his face in sickbay.

“The ship’s log shows Spock commandeered a shuttle shortly after we left him last night, Bones. Dropped it right out of the warp bubble and took off on his own. Can you sense anything?”

McCoy snarled. “67 point something chance of structural integrity loss? Hypocrite. He stole my plan. All I’m getting from him is a lot of stubborn silence, some pissoff, and a headache that won’t quit.” He led Kirk into his office and shut the door. “We’ve got to chase him down, Jim. You were right; it didn’t make sense-- but I figured it out.” He cleared his throat. “He thinks I don’t want to marry him.”

“Marry him?” Kirk shook his head with disbelief. “It’s just sex--”

“No. It’s a special kind of mental link, too. We already have the start of one from when he got injured back on Altamid. He offered to take me with him to New Vulcan to have it broken since I was so uncomfortable with him reading my mind. He’s hyper-sensitive about it. Hell, he told me himself he refused to link up with Uhura so she could bail if he didn’t make her happy.” 

McCoy wiped his sweaty face with a cloth from his desk, balled it up, and tossed it in a drawer. “I didn’t actually want to break it,” he confessed, unable to look Jim in the eye. “But I didn’t want to admit that to him, either, so I never gave him an answer. He thinks he’d be forcing me to link with him forever: Vulcan marriage.”

“So do you want to marry him?”

McCoy glared at him. “Of course I’ll marry him. If I don’t, he’ll die.”

“Hold on, hold on. Maybe he has a point. If you don’t actually want to marry him, nobody should force you to do it. I mean, altruism is fine, but his isn’t the only life that’s at stake here.”

“Yesterday you were the one who told me to man up and take one for the team!” McCoy could feel livid rage welling, even though he knew it wasn’t all his own. Spock’s control was definitely eroding.

“Yesterday it was just a few days of rough sex. Today it’s your happiness for the rest of your life.” Jim laid a hand on his shoulder. 

McCoy dropped his chin, staring at the tips of Kirk’s boots. “I want to,” he said, his voice shaky. Abruptly he remembered proposing to Jocelyn, how happy he’d been, how sure it was going to work. None of that post-adolescent _naïveté_ for him now. He wasn’t a young innocent anymore, all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. But… Spock. Cool, aloof logic, cold rationality, icy decision and remorseless action… paradoxically part of the tender, kind lover he’d just begun to discover, the intensely reserved private man who complemented the public one. “Maybe it’s a mistake. No way to tell. The timing is awful; if it could’ve waited another year… hell, another week… it’d’ve been better. But I want it, Jim.” He drew a deep breath, squaring his shoulders. “I want him.”

“Thought so.” Jim cuffed him lightly, jovial, but his eyes were serious. “I’ll see what I can do about sending the Klingons on a wild goose chase. As soon as I can give them the slip, I’ll warp us within beaming range of the shuttle. In the meantime… assemble yourself a portable honeymoon kit, doctor, and don’t spare the personal lubricant.”

McCoy winced. “You just had to bring that up, didn’t you.” He bit his lip. “We need to find him soon, Jim. He’s only got seven days left, and that’s pushing it.”


	18. Chapter 18

McCoy didn’t go up to the bridge to watch Jim play cat and mouse with the Klingons. Instead he holed up in sickbay, treating the occasional injury and arguing with himself over the contents of his survival pack. An air mattress-- shuttles weren’t known for comfortable overnight accommodations, and he wasn’t planning to lie belly-down on deck plating for a week-- some water, protein bars, and basic medical supplies were a given, but once he started putting medicines and things in, he wanted to add everything in sickbay. You never knew what might be needed. He was bound to forget something crucial; that was just Murphy’s Law.

Lubricant, though, was a definite yes. Calm evaporated into jitters as soon as he started examining his supply of medical jelly, second-guessing himself. Here he was, ready to get married, and he’d never done more with the man than kiss him a couple of times. The rest was imaginary. All dreams, and who even knew how much of what he’d dreamed had come from Spock? Worse, he’d never done more with a male than swap hand-jobs, but here he was, about to lie down and spread ‘em for a week’s rough fucking, give or take a day or two. 

He swallowed hard and added extra painkillers to the supply pack. _Anal_ -gesics, his mind suggested helpfully, and that made him snort so hard Chapel came in to check on him. 

“I’m fine. Fine. Just a little nervous.” He shook his head and threw in two more containers of lube. “I’ve got to be out of my mind.”

“It’ll be all right, doctor.” She laid her slim hand on his shoulder, comforting.

Damn, but Jocelyn would roll her eyes if she could see him now. She’d say he was crazy. She’d probably say she felt sorry for Spock. 

To hell with Jocelyn, anyway. She’d given up her right to judge Leonard McCoy the day she walked out of his life, and he was sick and tired of thinking about her. He had better things to worry about now.

McCoy stared at his pack, then threw in a couple of bars of emergency chocolate, some human and Vulcan vitamin supplements, blankets and inflatable pillows, a few energy booster packs for the hypospray, a handful of sedatives, antiseptic wipes, some anti-inflammatories, condoms (in case Spock was still lucid enough to put one on)… and by then the pack was stuffed, so heavy he could barely lift it. 

He hauled it all down to the transporter platform anyway. “If you get orders to beam me anywhere inside the next week, see to it this goes with me,” he told Scotty.

“Aye,” Scotty eyed the bulging pack, doubtful. “Are ye plannin’ to colonize a primitive world on yer own wi’ all o’ that?”

“None of your business, Mr. Scott. Fair warning: if I catch anyone prying into that pack, I’ll sign him up for experimental surgical hemorrhoid therapy, rank be damned.”

*****

The next few days crawled like half a dozen consecutive eternities. As the hours crept past, McCoy could feel his ability to concentrate disintegrating; his control on his temper wasn’t far behind. After 24 hours M’Benga “suggested” if he didn’t get the hell out out of sickbay on his own, he’d find himself medically certified unfit for duty, so he retreated and holed up in his cabin. 

Jim took time out from gunboat diplomacy to come by once; Spock had left a recorded message resigning his commission and laying out a brief will and testament. By mutual agreement, they left the latter half of the recording unplayed.

“I’m losing this document until further notice,” Jim scowled at the screen where Spock sat, the recording paused, sweat clearly visible on his brow. “As far as Starfleet is concerned, it doesn’t exist.”

Yet. McCoy winced. Jim’s presence was a welcome interlude nonetheless, distracting him from worry. His mind was a virtual merry-go-round, thoughts rising and falling like carved wooden horses traveling the same worn-out track over and over and over. 

“How are you holding up, Bones?”

“The hell if I know.” He surged to his feet and started to pace. “On one hand, you have all the alien sex porn holovids.” He felt himself falling into full rant mode. “Everybody gets off on the idea of breaking down a Vulcan’s self-control, or getting some odd-shaped alien sex organ inserted somewhere it doesn’t quite fit, or indulging a secret rape fantasy where you don’t have any choice but to lie back and get fucked by a wild man for a week. Human nature being what it is, it’s only natural to speculate for the sake of titillation-- as long as you’re in a safe environment.” 

He reached the wall and pivoted savagely on his heel, unable to dispel his growing agitation. “All I can say is it sounds a hell of a lot less appealing when you’re actually staring it in the face. Dammit, Jim, I’m a doctor, not an inflatable sex doll!” He fell into a chair with way too much force. Kirk handed him a glass and the dwindling bottle of Scotty’s homebrew.

“Maybe I’ll get lucky and instead of him having a monster cock and shredding me alive, he’ll be hung like a tribble, and I’ll spend a week staring at the ceiling thinking ‘why don’t they paint the insides of these things a more interesting color?’” McCoy groused. 

Jim made all the right sympathetic noises, but there wasn’t a lot he could do. He was busy most of the time anyway, planning to send the Klingons chasing after an unmanned shuttle on remote pilot so the Enterprise could sneak away for just long enough to hunt Spock down.

McCoy was caught off guard, torn between relief and dismay, when his comm buzzed in the middle of the night, waking him from fitful sleep. “We’ll catch up with our runaway shuttlecraft within the hour, Bones,” Kirk told him. “Better get up to the bridge right away.”

 _Shit._ Innards fluttering like a flock of starlings during spring migration, McCoy started his last-minute arrangements.


	19. Chapter 19

“Shuttle is now within visual range, captain. Shields are up. Course unclear. Trajectory indicates Mr. Spock’s course has no viable destination,” Sulu remarked, crisp and efficient.

Damn it. He was headed into deep space to die, knowing he’d never make New Vulcan. McCoy felt as if a giant’s fist closed and squeezed around his heart and he labored to breathe against the sudden flood of anguish. All his emotions pulsed in him, raw and ragged, too close to the surface, hard to control. He pushed them away so only apprehension predominated, and licked his lips, trying to look calm.

“Hailing frequencies open, Captain.” Uhura’s voice was a little too tense, but she too remained professional, transmitting the visual of Spock’s shuttle onto the main viewscreen. McCoy tried not to react, but he was wire-tense, and no matter what he tried, it came out: fingers and heels drumming, fists clenching… he settled for clutching a stylus behind his back, feeling it bend between his fists. He felt like a fool standing there, after all his careful preparation. Not only his bag of supplies; he’d made sure he was ready for action. Chances weren’t good for finding Spock in any frame of mind to get him ready before moving to the main event. 

“Kirk to Galileo. Come in, Mr. Spock.” Kirk made his voice sound lazy, like a stroll in the park, at his most disarming. No response, so he cut his eyes at McCoy, then winked.

“Doctor McCoy says there’s an 87.69% chance you’re still alive and healthy enough to answer, Spock.”

“A 93.42% chance after only four days. No less.” Spock’s voice grated at last, hesitant, and McCoy rolled his eyes to the heavens at the success of Kirk’s ploy.

“Spock, I want you to lower the shields.” McCoy couldn’t keep silent. “I need to beam aboard and take care of you.”

A long pause ensued; at last Spock cued visual reception. McCoy sucked a deep breath. He was haggard, his once-perfect hair mussed. He must have lost fifteen or twenty kilos; his dark eyes had deep shadows under them and blazed with a fitful, fiery light. McCoy could see distinct fingerprints pressed into the panels where his fingers clutched as he struggled for control. He swallowed hard, thinking of his own fragile flesh. But that would mend… he hoped.

“Captain, I trust you found... my letter of resignation. I regret the necessity of taking a shuttle. It will be largely undamaged when I no longer require it, and can be retrieved.” The words were costing him, halting and hoarse, crackling in his chest. “But I must ask you to desist in your pursuit.”

“Spock, it’d take you another twenty years to reach to the nearest starbase without warp drive.”

“Captain, your reluctance to take action and confine me to quarters necessitated my response. Please respect my choice.” His eyes blazed at them, haunted with pain and rage, and he reached toward the button that would close the channel.

“Mr. Spock, your resignation is not accepted.”

Rage flared on the Vulcan’s gaunt face, and McCoy was aware Spock had temporarily lost the power of speech. Spock’s barriers were crumbling, and the residue of Spock’s anger flooded into him through the link, a tide of dull fire, nearly overwhelming him. He struggled to cling to his own identity, his own purpose, battling the fire with all his strength. His headache pulsed, a blinding flare, but Spock didn’t intend an attack, and when the first intensity subsided, he was himself inside the burning, resolute and determined.

He steadied himself, dropping the stylus, entertaining a fleeting wish that he’d taken a sedative. But that would have been disaster; he needed all his wits just to hold his own against Spock’s powerful mind. 

Somewhere outside the conflagration in his mind Kirk was still talking, playing for time. McCoy knew it, but he could not spare the concentration to comprehend. He clung to control instead-- by his fingernails at first, steadying slowly as he adapted to the growing breakdown of the shields Spock had created between them. He was still intact, still himself, and now that Spock’s shields were crumbling, the intrusion carrying into McCoy’s conscious mind, his newfound ability to differentiate between the external emotions and his own helped him swim against the tide to choose his own reactions. 

It was time.

“Spock.” He stepped forward until he stood next to Kirk, lacing his hands together behind his back and bouncing on his heels. 

He straightened, absurdly self-conscious, painfully aware of all the eyes and ears on the bridge that would witness what he was going to say next-- but his gut instincts were screaming at him. There wasn’t much time; Spock had less than no patience left. If anything was going to make him drop those shields….

Spock didn’t look aside, still staring straight ahead into the viewscreen, eyes locked on Kirk’s face, so McCoy tried again, a little louder.

“Spock,” he swallowed hard and took the plunge. “Parted from me and never parted.” 

The Vulcan’s eyes snapped wide open and darted to him in disbelief. Spock froze, one hand poised over the panel, still ready to cut the connection. McCoy heard Uhura gasp behind him, and knew she understood.

“Never and always touching and touched.” Self-conscious, McCoy could hear his own drawl, shaping itself oddly around the elegant ritual words. He was aware of Jim turning to stare at him, the bridge crew following suit, their jaws dropping. Other than the fiery annoyance, he still couldn’t feel any hint of Spock’s thoughts inside his mind; his face burned with the awareness that he had just spoken Vulcan wedding vows to Spock right here in front of God and everybody. 

He didn’t look at any of them. He only had eyes for Spock, whose pupils dilated, swallowing the irises with black. His tongue darted out and wet his narrow lips. 

“Leonard.” The word escaped him on a thread of breath. “Parted from me and never parted. Never and always… touching and touched.” His voice was hoarse, barely a husk of its former self. McCoy could feel his intellect now, not just the rage, mute but present-- and growing lust, as if he were feeling the scalding heat of a house-fire through a closed door, warning him not to pull it open. 

Spock spoke again, the words dragged from him slowly. “We meet, not at the appointed place,” he seemed to struggle for a moment, “But at the appointed time.” He obviously no longer had the strength to resist what was offered. 

McCoy nodded, forcing himself to remain calm. “Drop the shields, Spock. I’m beaming aboard.”

Spock’s hand resumed its aborted journey, but to McCoy’s everlasting relief, it moved aside and touched the shield generator control instead of the comm. 

“The shuttle’s shields have dropped, Keptin,” Chekov reported.

“Jim, now,” McCoy said, urgent, his eyes never releasing Spock. “Then go take care of the Neutral Zone. When we’re ready, we’ll comm you and start back on our own.”

“Mr. Scott, beam Doctor McCoy directly onto the Galileo,” Jim snapped. 

The familiar, hated sparkles took McCoy, and the last thing he heard was “Happy honeymooning, Bones.” Damn it, he was gonna _kill_ Jim when he got back.


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter is NSFW. You have been warned!

The shuttle interior was dim, roasting hot, and smelled of overheated Vulcan. Behind him he could hear his pack materializing, and when he turned to look he could have laughed, or maybe cried-- next to it sat a big bottle of Macallan and an equally large gift assortment of dark chocolate, tied with a ludicrous pink bow. Honeymoon gifts, of a sort. Maybe he should apologize to Scotty for the hemorrhoid threat.

Spock didn’t pounce on him the second he materialized, which was both a concern and a relief. He was about sick of arguing with the stubborn jackass-- even the imaginary arguments that were all he’d had since Spock shut him out.

The unexpected delay allowed him enough time to haul out the air mattress, flop it down across the center of the floor in the back of the shuttle, and hastily pull the inflation trigger. Pillows and blankets came next. The mattress had pockets, so he hastily stashed a selection of lubricants and protein bars and bottles of water so they’d be handy, keeping the more delicate stuff hidden in the protective depths of the pack. 

Spock still hadn’t snatched him. Maybe he ought to take off all his clothes or something? He turned, anxious, and found Spock hunched over the navigation board, his elbows resting on the panel heedless of control buttons, his fingers steepled together. His eyes had rolled back in his head, and he murmured in Vulcan, a throaty, gravelly undertone, half-audible. 

The blood fever. He was trying to control it with meditative techniques.

They clearly weren’t working very well.

McCoy thought of his tricorder, but it was still buried in his pack, and knowing just exactly how badly Spock’s biological systems were out of whack wasn’t going to fix them. He swallowed hard and sent a direct order to his feet, which mutinied at first, then slowly surrendered.

He made them walk, one after the other, until he stood directly behind Spock. 

“There’s a large oblate asteroid a few thousand kilometers away; Jim suggested that if there was still time, we should conceal the shuttle by landing on the side away from the neutral zone.” McCoy began to tap at the controls, laying in a course. “Hang on while I get us there. Then I’ll be right with you.” He tried to keep as still as possible, careful not to touch Spock as he worked.

Heat rolled off the Vulcan in waves, and despite his absolute stillness, McCoy could feel the tension tightening in him, ratcheting up toward the exploding point. 

He was starting to sweat, and he could feel the lust and the fever capering at the edge of his mind like gleeful demons in Hell. By the time he had the shuttle’s landing clamps engaged, his hands were shaking so badly he could hardly function.

As the clamps clunked into place the world around McCoy wavered and the shuttlecraft faded under the influence of Spock’s delirium. The heat baking into McCoy originated now from a dull red sun, sullen on the craggy horizon. Nothing green grew there, only stone and choking dust the hue of rusty iron. He stood in a small clearing that put him in mind of Stonehenge, except the land around it lay sere and waste, with no water to be seen or heard within a hundred miles.

Vulcan’s Forge, before Nero came. McCoy turned his head, filling his eyes; this memory was all that remained of the place. 

Spock spoke then, his voice so husky McCoy barely understood.

“What we are about to do comes down from the time of the beginning, without change. This is the Vulcan heart. This is the Vulcan soul. This is our way.” He arose, trembling, and turned, raising a mallet to strike a tarnished copper gong. Sweat poured off him in rivers and his hands twitched, as if they would snatch McCoy even with Spock’s conscious will opposing them. “Kah-if-farr.”

He waited, trembling with anxiety for some unknown response; McCoy could see the whites of his eyes, an unbroken ring stretching all the way around his pupils. He swallowed hard, wanting very badly to do what Spock needed.

“Kah-if-farr,” he repeated, uncertain. Taking up a second hammer, he struck the gong in turn. Spock exhaled in relief, his eyes closing. His whole body sagged as he extended his trembling hand. McCoy dropped the hammer in the dust, reaching out with two fingers to touch Spock’s.

Spock’s fingers advanced, briefly caressing his own. The scalding heat flared at the contact, the door between them swinging open, the mind beyond engulfed in flame. The Vulcan drew a shuddering breath, and McCoy dragged his gaze up from the touch of their fingers just in time to see Spock lunge.

Spock’s elbow wrapped behind his neck, strong as an iron bar, and he dragged McCoy forward into a kiss so fierce his lip split under its force. He yelped, but the fever roared through him too now, flash-point ignition exploding through all his nerves. Spock drove him back, stumbling, holding him upright. His shirt bound him as Spock seized it, then ripped free with a purr, the tough fiber shredding like tissue. 

He tried to drag Spock’s shirt up, but the Vulcan was relentless, pushing him back until his heels hooked over the edge of a low stone outcrop and he teetered. 

Then they fell, Spock heavy on top of him, driving the breath from his lungs. The stone where he had fallen was impossibly soft; dimly he realized they were still in the shuttle. They grappled, biting at one another’s lips as Spock ripped the rest of his clothes away. The fevered heat of the alien body settled between McCoy’s bare thighs as Spock ripped away the placket of his own trousers. McCoy felt the material give way as though under his own fingers; he briefly lost the ability to retain himself as a separate mind, fading into the molten, red-hot firestorm of the link.

 _Desperation, fear, lust, understanding, shame, compassion_ \-- the emotions boiled through them, whole and all-encompassing, as bodies joined in haste. The part of him that was Leonard cried out in pain, and the part that was Spock echoed that cry with ecstasy and drank his pain from his lips, tasting the bright metallic tang of human blood. _Regret. Compulsion. Blinding need. Pleasure, pain. Acceptance. ….Love._

With that McCoy became Leonard once more. Spock claimed him with forceful thrusts, subsumed in the fever, lust and the one-two punch of white-hot pleasure and pain burning away his rationality, scouring him bare of anything but the slide and press of their bodies. 

Spock plunged inside him again and again with a desperation that verged on madness; his world was fire and Leonard was the paradox that both fed the fire and promised to quench it. Leonard must be the strong one now, the one who absorbed the brutality of the act, the only one who could care for Spock in his delirium.

Leonard gasped, head tipping back over the edge of the mattress. Spock claimed him with relentless force, unable to control his need. The brooding monochrome of Vulcan’s Forge flickered in and out around them, testiment to the erratic power of the link. The pain gradually faded, leaving him filled, inundated with sensation-- fullness and pleasure as Spock’s brutal strokes thrust steadily against his prostate, waking arousal that was, mercifully, all his own. 

He curled his arms around Spock, feeling powerful muscles heaving beneath sweat-slick skin, the pulse and rush of life intense and vital in him. Fierce pride burned in his heart that he could preserve this life, this incredibly valuable life, so dear to him. He moaned against the elegant curve of Spock’s ear, letting Spock hear his enjoyment, trying to help him feel the pleasure he was causing. Spock’s frantic, punishing grasp gentled, his head turning as he nuzzled blindly against Leonard’s neck, inhaling the scent of him. _Imprinting. Imprinting on me._

He brushed his hand over Spock’s forehead, wiping away perspiration, and Spock turned his head to lick his fingers, sucking them, teeth rasping against the pads. When Leonard hitched his hips up, meeting the next fierce stroke to show willingness, Spock gave a low cry, shoving deep. He quivered, groaning deep in his throat. Leonard felt a flare inside him as the erectile tissue of the Vulcan’s _bulbus glandis_ suddenly expanded-- not at the base of his cock like any decent god-fearing earth mammal’s, but near its tip, where folds of soft, loose skin covered the exotic double ridge. 

Leonard’s eyes rolled back and he gasped as the next stroke battered the swollen mass hard against his prostate, the sensual shock of it making him dig his nails into Spock’s back hard enough to draw crescents of blood. “Fuck!” he yelped-- and Spock, being Spock, took him quite literally. 

His hips drove in and out, thrusts ragged but powerful, and McCoy moaned and whimpered, helpless, starbursts of almost intolerable pleasure flaring with every stroke. He raked Spock’s back with his nails, unable to stop, and Spock’s teeth sank at his throat, marking him. _Leonard._ It fleeted through his mind-- recognition of his mate-- and more Vulcan words fragmented between them, lust and need bitten in sharp calligraphy against his skin.

Spock’s fingers sizzled on the contact points on his face. McCoy moaned, feeling the tight, hot, almost intolerable pleasure of his own body as it clasped Spock and yielded to him; the pleasure soared, release and relief just out of reach. Harder, faster-- one more, one more, just one more.

Orgasm burst like a nova, the two of them shuddering and gasping in unison, Spock’s fingers leaving deep purple bruises to be discovered later. McCoy arched, crying out as they spent in powerful pulses. Their minds sank deeper into the fire together, Spock’s consciousness binding McCoy’s to itself with tendrils of pure, sizzling pleasure, deepening the meld. _One._

McCoy lifted up, struggling for a kiss he couldn’t quite reach, dragging Spock down on top of him. McCoy collapsed, knees giving out. Still shuddering, he lay helpless for a long moment as he gasped for breath against Leonard’s throat, at the mercy of the fires that drove him. _It is not over._ The presence of his mind was raw with dread, with shame, with regret for the long and pleasant courtship they could have shared, had not his precious control been stripped from him by this curse.

McCoy felt a renewed rush of sympathy and compassion. He held Spock close tenderly, trying to give comfort while dragging breath into his half-compressed lungs as best he could. The air tasted hot and thick, heavy with the faint scent of blood and the sharper, insistent smell of sex as Spock’s semen began to seep out of him, thick and viscous, wet on McCoy’s buttocks and thighs. Perhaps some of that moisture was blood. 

He didn’t care. He couldn’t stop his wandering hands from exploring Spock, until so recently forbidden for him to touch: the tender, thin skin of Spock’s closed eyelids, so fragile under his fingertips, the sweating curl and point of an ear, the hot, wet dark hair plastered against Spock’s skull, the ridges of his ribs and the knobs of his spine. He winced when he drew back fingers that showed smudges of green on the tips. He was not the only one who had suffered injury from the ferocity of their first coupling.

But Spock was right. They weren’t finished; not by a long shot.

Spock was still hard, still deep inside him, and it was only a matter of moments before he began to move again. Slower this time, but still fierce, he claimed Leonard, breath rasping between his parted lips. His dark eyes flew open and fixed on Leonard’s, pupils so wide only a thin ring of brown showed around them. Again he took Leonard’s face in his hands, hips moving insistently as he intensified the bond once more. Leonard could feel it grow brighter, warmer between them, filling his mind just as powerfully as Spock filled his body. The desert dust felt soft as silk around his shoulders, hot and welcoming. 

“Spock,” he managed to moan, opening his thighs wider, welcoming him in. 

Spock reached down, hands settling at his waist, lifting him easily to drive deeper. McCoy arched his back, groaning at the stretch, his arms trailing out over his head. He clenched his fists around a jagged bit of boulder and braced, meeting the thrusts firmly, tightening himself around the thick shaft. Spock uttered a sound that was very nearly a whimper, his teeth sunk deep in his lip. 

He could feel Spock feel it-- so good his cock quivered, the tip smearing wet on his belly. Spock wasn’t satisfied; he shifted, hooking his hands behind Leonard’s knees and pushing them up, folding him in two. Leonard gasped for breath, his head swimming, dizzy with rising sensation as Spock’s belly rode against his cock with each thrust. 

“Fuck yeah,” he gritted his teeth, head thrashing back and forth, the tendons in his thighs starting to burn from the strain. Good, so good, one of Spock’s hands on his face now, identity blurring in the onslaught of hot-sweet-tight-rough-good. He couldn’t breathe; couldn’t--

Annihilation. His mind exploded, and maybe this was what death felt like, or maybe not, because he was surfacing and Spock was with him. Spock _was_ him, hard-planed face pressed against his softer one, breath coming harsh in his ear. Sticky wetness between their bellies began to dry at once, sealing them together. More fluid seeped out of him, though Spock still remained hard inside. He could feel fucking _everything_ , even Spock’s sudden wave of burning humiliation--

“No, no!” Frantic, he groped for Spock’s head and kissed him, urgent, rubbing his graceful ears, his high cheekbones, his alien brows, his strong jaw. “God, it’s good-- do it again!” He moaned the words against Spock’s lips. “You know I can’t lie to you, not now, not like this.” He fumbled clumsily to reach out with his mind until Spock reluctantly opened his eyes. 

McCoy met his lost and terrible gaze without flinching. He didn’t care how sore and banged up he was going to be when this was over, because this was who he was supposed to be; this was what he was supposed to be. He was Leonard McCoy, he’d dedicated his life to taking care of people, and this was one of the most important people in his life. Now he had the right to care for Spock this way, and nobody else ever would, not while he lived…. It was bliss. _It was **right.**_

Spock moaned surrender and kissed him, driving inside his mouth with slow fierce strokes of his tongue, then drawing back to lick at the blood from his split lip. He thrust again, still needing, the flames still simmering in him, but he was lucid enough now to kiss, to caress, to slow down and make sure he tormented Leonard’s prostate with every burning, perfect thrust. Leonard held him close, stroking his back. 

“I’ll get you through this,” he promised in a fierce whisper. “And we’ll still be us afterward. And next time… next time, my God, Spock! This is any human’s hottest fucking fantasy, don’t you know that? Next time, I swear it, I’ll make it yours too, I’ll make it so good for you….”

Spock lifted his head; his wild eyes searched Leonard’s as he licked his dry, cracking lips. “You already are,” he rasped, laboring as if language was alien to him, then devoured him with rough kisses.


	21. Chapter 21

Spock proved merciless, relentless in his need, wholly governed and driven beyond endurance by the fever, but McCoy was only human. When he was finally exhausted he drowsed, fading in and out of consciousness, riding the ebb and flow of the tide of Spock’s fever. He dreamed their pleasure in half-waking scenes that took on a surreal, languid heat. The fever in Spock’s mind baked through him just like summer sunshine back home. Spock was still locked within his body, and showed no sign of being able to pull out. 

Floating on dizzy exhaustion, half-asleep, whimpering softly as Spock took ownership of his body, McCoy wondered with sleepy concern how much longer his new husband would be overwhelmed by the carnal thirst that drove him, robbing him of logic, of lucidity, of adequate food and drink, of rest.

He stretched out an arm, groping for some of the lubricant he’d stowed. He snagged it with his fingertips, clinging to it as Spock rolled them over, as Spock mouthed hungrily at his throat, at his ear. It was a struggle to get any of it in the right place with Spock still locked inside his body, but eventually he made things a little easier for them both. 

He managed to drink half a bottle of water while Spock was sucking fiercely on the place where his shoulder met his neck. His eyes rolled back in his head and he spilled the rest with a moan when Spock found just the right place and nipped it hard, then licked to soothe the sting. 

It hurt a lot by then; he’d been fucked raw, but Spock’s Vulcan body was adapted to the rigors of the lengthy mating, and he showed no signs of slowing. McCoy sank his mind deeper inside Spock’s, where the pleasure and the sizzling heat of the fire masked the pain. The flames he found there were familiar now, welcoming. They became one, wreathed in a golden glow of passionate combustion, burning together. It felt glorious and terrible, the most incredibly intimate, overwhelming thing McCoy had ever known. He kissed Spock softly and let himself be taken once more.

*****

Perhaps 36 hours after they began, Spock’s initial erection finally wilted enough to let him pull all the way out. McCoy didn’t know precisely how long they’d been joined; he couldn’t make out the ship’s chrono from here. 

He slipped out of Spock’s arms, moving with care. Thank heaven! No more pissing in a used water bottle while Spock was busy thrusting. 

His nerves were singing grand opera, but he didn’t much care-- he’d reached a blissful, floating state where every sensation only intensified the others and the pain just fed into the pleasure, redoubling it. He tottered to his knees, unable to stand, and crawled over to fumble in his pack. Water first-- and fuck, it tasted like heaven. He gulped eagerly, handing another bottle to Spock.

“Rehydrate,” he commanded. “You’re even worse off than I am.” He wasn’t too bad-- inner thighs chafed, ass raw and throbbing, more bruises and scratches and bites decorating him than he could count, but no bones broken, no major internal damage. 

Water first, protoplaser second. He put one of the condoms over the end and adjusted the settings, then positioned the thing for some extremely indelicate self-healing. He sighed as it did its work, air rasping through his aching throat-- hoarse from moaning, gasping, hell, even some screaming-- even though most of the yelling hadn’t been him. He cut Spock an amused look. _Who’d have thought he’d be the noisy one?_

The Vulcan rolled his eyes and upended his own water bottle, his throat working in measured gulps as he swallowed it all in one go. Leonard set down the protoplaser and waited until he was done. 

“You need me to patch you up anywh--?”

Spock pounced, and Leonard’s empty water bottle went flying. _Guess not._

*****

The next time they came up for air he managed to grab them both a protein supplement. While Spock was absorbed with food McCoy had intimate relations with the protoplaser again, then forced himself to stand and tottered over to the instrument panel, checking the chrono. Three days since he’d transported? When the hell did _that_ happen?

“We’re lucky none of the damned Klingons came out here to investigate,” he muttered. Spock came up behind him, sliding an arm around his belly, half amorous, half-supportive, and began to nibble at his neck, reaching one hand to cradle his jaw and turn his head, wanting his mouth. His lips were cool with water and his tongue tasted of protein supplement; they were both disgusting and sticky, urgently in need of a shower.

 _Leonard._ The fires burned lower than they had, and night had drawn its curtain over the dull desert landscape. The fire shone out against gathering darkness and the chill of nightfall, a fierce russet glow driving his desire, but tenderness shone through them now, his hands sliding gently over McCoy, savoring rather than plundering. The bond between them gleamed in McCoy’s heart: deep, pure gold shining amidst the flames, forged in the crucible of the fever.

McCoy purred and opened for his kiss, then turned to face him, linking his arms behind Spock’s neck, but Spock pulled back. “Shuttlecraft, deactivate touch controls,” he commanded, hoarse, and easily hoisted Leonard up onto the panel ass-first, pushing his thighs apart.

McCoy closed his eyes and the desert returned for him. He arched against Spock, luxuriant; the protoplaser had taken the pain, so he still felt stretched and debauched, sensual… willing despite his weariness. He wrapped his legs around Spock and hung on, moaning. _You’re going to owe me so **much** time topping after this._

Spock’s lips said “Very well,” but the link was warmer: _I will be eager for it._

He was starting to like that link, damn it all. 

McCoy let his head fall back, groaning with fulfillment as Spock sank inside him again.

*****

McCoy woke again when he absolutely had to have a piss. After he finished Spock was still asleep, so he took the time out for a whore’s bath, then wiped Spock down while he slept, dead to the world. 

By this time, he was as almost as aware of Spock’s consciousness as he was of his own. He laid his palm on Spock’s forehead, stroking a wisp of tangled hair back into place. 

Most of the fever seemed gone, but Spock’s dreams were still vivid with heat-- he still dreamed of McCoy beneath him, clinging and moaning, his. McCoy went very still, seeing his own strange, foreign presence foremost in Spock’s mind, Spock’s relentless intellect so busy and alert, so intently focused on him, even while sleeping. 

He let himself exult in the way Spock craved McCoy’s strange, addictive taste, his rounded ears and the uninhibited nature of his sexual response, loved how quickly he was roused to intense feeling, how he inhabited every emotion fully and eagerly, how he argued with all his passion, how he was honorable and brave even when he was wrong. 

_Fascinating. Mine._ Spock groped for McCoy and frowned, failing to find him.

McCoy chuckled aloud, deeply touched. He evaded the seeking hands long enough to run his dermal regenerator over the scratches on Spock’s back. However, he left Spock the bites and the hickies and the bruises-- just like he was leaving his own. He felt strangely proud of them, fiercely possessive; they were _his_. They were the marks that proved Spock craved him, that he’d driven Spock wild with passion, that he’d met Spock’s fever without flinching and quenched it with love. 

He found himself almost grateful for this thing Spock regarded as such a horrific affliction. After all, if not for the fever, would Spock ever have found the courage to show him such secrets? 

Spock moaned and reached for him again, so McCoy finished hastily and lay down in his arms, offering himself up, his heart full of fierce tenderness. 

*****

The fever left Spock on the fifth day, and Vulcan’s Forge departed with it, a memory of flame. By then they were both so exhausted they only wanted to sleep, to lie together and bask in the link, wordlessly taking comfort in knowing it was over, that they had survived.

“Don’t,” McCoy reassured Spock when his thoughts slid toward shame as they lay together, sticky limbs entwined, not much wanting to be apart. “I don’t think any less of you, _ashayam_.” The word came easily to his tongue, without thinking; he examined it with faint surprise. So Vulcans _did_ have a word for love. It tasted perfect on his tongue.

He stroked Spock’s hair, wanting to say more, but he didn’t know how to translate what he felt into words, so he settled for nuzzling his lips against the curve of Spock’s ear, kissing lightly at its point.

 _Parted from me and never parted,_ Spock answered without speech, the thought accompanied by a weary flush of warmth and gratitude; his voice was still a damaged husk. McCoy clucked his tongue and reached for his diagnostic instruments, then gave him more water. 

*****

By the sixth day, McCoy began wondering which poor bastard of a yeoman was going to get assigned disciplinary duty and be told off to clean the shuttle, and how in the name of hell they were going to buy the crewman’s silence afterward. The place was a den of filthy iniquity, barely habitable. There were his own ass-prints all over the control panels, for fucksake. It had been better back in the desert.

“Order the shuttle medically quarantined. We will clean it ourselves when we recover,” Spock said firmly, and McCoy laughed his ass off. 

He called the Enterprise at about 1100 hours-- voice protocol only-- and asked for pickup. Uhura gave him confirmation in a tone that fairly dripped with intrigue, curiosity-- and more than a little jealousy. 

“You know this would make a foundation for the biggest bombshell of a research paper the JSMA ever laid eyes on,” he teased Spock after she cut the connection.

Spock raised a brow at him, faintly alarmed.

“Pity they’ll never see it.” He nestled his face into Spock’s palm and kissed it, licking the center amorously, pleased with his triumph when Spock’s pupils dilated. “I guess we’d better find our clothes and get dressed.”

Spock’s clothes were in bad shape, though his trousers would preserve his modesty if he held them on himself-- but McCoy’s were shredded. 

“Dammit, I knew I’d forget something!” He glared at the unused vitamins and all the other unnecessary stuff he’d crammed in his pack. “A change of clothes!” He held up the ripped shreds of his own uniform pants. They hung from his hand in about six pieces, completely unwearable. 

Spock gazed on them for a long moment, then tipped his head back and began to laugh, softly at first, then in earnest. McCoy stared at him, startled and fearful at once, then breathless with wonder. He went to him when he stopped, stroking his lips with one trembling thumb, his heart full. Spock kissed his thumb, eyes alight with mischief. “You will have to cover yourself with a blanket, Leonard.”

“You smug green-blooded ingrate,” McCoy breathed, but he meant it with love. Spock’s eyes dilated again, his hands sliding around Leonard’s waist and pulling him close-- and Jim Kirk’s voice spoiled the moment, erupting from the comm just as their lips were about to touch.

“Gentlemen! Good to hear from you. I was starting to worry.”

“Captain. Please clear the shuttle bay for landing in accordance with protocol 12,” Spock directed, cool and smooth as ever despite the lingering hoarseness in his voice. 

“Bones?” Jim questioned, absolutely unable to let it alone. 

“Right here, Jim.” Never mind that ‘here’ was now in Spock’s lap. Damn the man, he had as many hands as a Procyon octobrachii. McCoy struggled half-heartedly to get up, but Spock was persistent, and he failed. “Can you speed things up a little? I’m about sick of looking at the inside of this shuttle, present company definitely included.” He gave Spock a wink and slapped away the hand that slid suggestively over his nipple. “Commander Spock is cured, but I want a quarantine on this ship until I can go over it with a full biological decontamination kit.”

“You got it, Bones.” Kirk paused. “You, ah, have about an hour remaining before we can get to you.”

“Thank you, captain. That interval should be sufficient,” Spock said blandly and terminated the call. 

“Sufficient for what?” McCoy blinked at him, then gasped as Spock’s hand settled on him quite inappropriately. 

“I wish to exchange places,” he whispered against McCoy’s mouth, the whiskey-dark rasp of his voice sending chills up and down McCoy’s spine. 

“Oh!” he gasped, then raised himself and sat across Spock’s thighs, facing him. “The time would be sufficient, maybe.” He leaned in to kiss Spock and reached to lend a hand of his own. “But not nearly long enough.” He leaned back, offering himself automatically, but Spock reached to pull him forward again, sliding a hand behind his neck.

“Next time,” McCoy promised, his cock quivering at the thought of it. “When we can clean you up first, and when I’ve got plenty of time to get you ready.”

“That is logical. Yet I am disappointed,” Spock confessed, and leaned forward to lick at his mouth.

How the hell did he make every word out of his mouth sound like hot buttered sex? McCoy didn’t know, and he didn’t care; he just leaned back and let Spock slip between his thighs, moaning as his bondmate’s hand curled around his shaft and began to stroke him with great efficiency.

They were, after all, working against a timetable.


	22. Chapter 22

Jim was waiting when they emerged from the Galileo together, Spock offering his hand to steady McCoy as he stepped down. The Enterprise felt strange, surreal, after the womblike atmosphere of the shuttle; the ceiling was too high and the space too wide, but the air tasted blissfully fresh. McCoy inhaled it gratefully, clutching the blanket around him squaw-style while Spock nodded formally to the captain and stepped back into the shuttle to fetch out McCoy’s pack of unused supplies.

“Holy shit.” Jim stepped forward, his eyes wide. “You both look like a ship’s hull after three light-years of traveling through an asteroid field at full impulse with no shields. Spock….” He leaned to one side, squinting into the shuttle. “Is that a-- Bones, does he know…?”

“I’m not gonna tell him if you don’t.” McCoy surveyed Spock with satisfaction as he emerged; he had a very prominent green love bite on the right-hand side of his throat, stretching up above the collar of his uniform shirt nearly all the way to his ear. McCoy hadn’t offered to vanish it, and Spock hadn’t asked. Maybe he _didn’t_ know. His normally perfect hair was wildly tousled, and he had to hold his trousers up with one hand. He shouldered the pack, stepped down, and laid his free hand on McCoy’s waist possessively. Aside from a faint green blush staining his high cheekbones, he seemed perfectly composed.

“What’s this?” Kirk reached out to touch McCoy’s blanket, dislodging something and promptly dropping it like a hot potato, staring down at the deck in fascinated horror. 

McCoy craned his neck and identified Spock’s ripped black underpants. “Oh. Those.” He snatched them swiftly and tucked them up under his blanket. “Trophy of war. Mine now. Hands off.”

“And the smell, dear God, both of you,” Kirk stepped back, wrinkling his nose, appalled. “I’ve been in Orion brothels that smelled better than you two. Shower. Immediately. That’s an order.” He reached for his communicator and triggered the ship-wide intercom. “All personnel clear corridor seventeen, the officers’ deck turbolifts, and corridor D22. Medical quarantine drill. You have thirty seconds to evacuate. Remain at your safety checkpoint until further notice,” he said, theatrically waving one hand in front of his face to clear the air. 

“Spock, I think we’ve just been insulted,” McCoy drawled, stepping forward. “But I have to admit, a shower and a fresh uniform both sound pretty good at this point.”

“I agree, doctor.” McCoy was still unsteady on his feet, so Spock steadied him when he stumbled a little, and McCoy smiled at him automatically, accepting the help. Spock reached out a long finger and tipped his chin up, then kissed him lightly, matter-of-fact and without apparent self-consciousness, closing his eyes for a moment to savor the silent communication of affection that passed between them. When it was over, McCoy realized Jim was staring at them with the strangest expression-- shock, amusement, concern… even a flicker of envy. McCoy was certain of it. 

“I’ll expect you both on duty tomorrow unless M’Benga finds you medically unfit. Visit him immediately after you clean up. That’s also an order.”

“Of course, captain.” Spock inclined his head, polite.

“Bones.” Kirk caught at his arm, slowing him and letting Spock move several paces ahead. “Was it… is he,” he cleared his throat, trying to wait till Spock was out of earshot. McCoy smirked; the link was active. Not gonna happen.

“Was he any good, Bones?” Kirk hissed in his ear, absolutely incapable of restraining his curiosity.

McCoy laughed. “He’s a machine, Jim.” He slapped Kirk’s shoulder and moved to join Spock, who had paused at the door to wait for him.

“Usually when you say that it doesn’t sound so complimentary,” Kirk complained, stunned, and watched them go.

*****

McCoy was first to arrive for his physical, and M’Benga had Chapel put him on the table. “I have questions, you know.”

“I’ll tell you answers if you promise not to share them.” McCoy lay back and the table tipped up; M’Benga scanned him. 

“Leave the superficials,” McCoy said sharply when he raised the dermal regenerator. “Except for the face.”

“If you say so.” M’Benga repaired his lip and took care of a few punctures that were infected. He left the bruises and bites, managing to look arch without saying much. 

“I’m scanning a small amount of residual damage consistent with fissures from prolonged and rough anal intercourse. I assume deployment of the _bulbus glandis_ increased the friction and contusion trauma, but you seem to have taken care of the injuries already.”

“One of the advantages of being a doctor is being able to treat your own sex-related injuries.” McCoy tried not to flush with embarrassment. 

“You’re partly dehydrated, low on electrolytes, and your general nutritional levels could use topping up. I’m prescribing plenty of water, fruits, and vegetables for the next few days. Otherwise, I’m giving you a clean bill of health.” M’Benga returned the table to vertical just as Spock stepped in, hands decorously clasped behind his back. “Ah, Mr. Spock. You’re just in time to take your turn.”

Spock stepped onto the examination table and M’Benga elevated it, asking Chapel to adjust the medical computers for Vulcan physiology. McCoy watched for a moment, but when Chapel’s eyes darted aside, studying him with curiosity, he got flustered and fled into his office to hide. He sat down at his desk, running his hand over the familiar nicks and scars on its surface. M’Benga’s file and Spock’s supplementary information on Vulcan biology still lay in his drawer, exactly where he’d left them.

It felt strange to be back where he belonged, back in pocket, everything and everyone seeming bizarrely normal-- as if the past few days with Spock had been a dream, unreal. Spock was so calm, so aloof! He hadn’t even spoken on entering. He hadn’t looked at McCoy. He’d just lain down placidly to be examined. Even the link had receded until it was no more than a gentle sense of potential lingering in McCoy’s mind.

Panic seized him suddenly as he sat there, staring at Bob the lizard. He had to stop himself from dragging up the tail of his shirt to reassure himself that all the bruises and marks from Spock’s mouth and fingers weren’t just figments of his imagination. He rubbed his hand over the base of his neck under his collar, and the faint, sensual sting of pain reassured him; the bite was still there. 

So now what? Were they married by Starfleet standards? Weren’t they? Would Spock still want to spend time with him, would they go out? Were they supposed to move in together and share quarters, fighting over who got to set the thermostat? Would they have more sex now, or was it over till the next time _pon farr_ rolled around?

He stared at his own wild eyes in the reflective glass of the inactive monitor. He looked like he was about to go straight into cardiac arrest, or maybe start Kussmaul respiration. 

“Doctor.”

He’d forgotten to lock the door, and Spock stood there in the opening, looking a little green around the gills himself-- OK, maybe the Vulcan equivalent would’ve been red. 

His title calmed him; the tone Spock used to speak it was soft, almost a caress.

“You check out OK?” He knew Spock had; he’d examined the man himself before they ever called Jim for pickup. 

“I am adequately healthy to resume my duties.” Spock’s eyes gleamed, and the corners of his mouth turned up ever so slightly. “No thanks to the tender ministrations of human medical equipment, which is insufficient to measure the level of hemocyanin in my blood, or accurately diagnose the efficacy of my distinctive hybrid neuropeptides.”

“Dammit, Spock,” McCoy sputtered, sure he was being baited. “If you don’t think I take care of you adequately--”

“I have no serious complaints.” Spock stepped forward. “As hemocyanin is not the primary oxygen binder in my bloodstream and my neuropeptides are clearly functioning at a level far superior to humans’, as indicated by your own inferior rate of neural processing.” His eyes gleamed.

McCoy leaped for the fight with grateful speed. “Inferior neural processing, is that what you think?” He took a deep breath, then gambled all. “Then you leave me no choice, Mr. Spock, but to challenge you to a competition. Which of us can perform the best critical analysis of _Casablanca_? We’ll find a neutral observer to be the judge. Just one _caveat_.” His heart and belly fluttered with both fear and hope. “You’ll have to sit through it with me before you’re qualified to compose your analysis.”

“I accept the challenge,” Spock said. Stepping forward, he lifted his hand. McCoy rose to meet him, glad to touch fingers, feeling the quicksilver caress of Spock’s mind: amusement, relief, affection, slight uncertainty. 

“It feels funny, being back,” McCoy said by way of apology. 

“Are you referring to the juvenile human concept of humor, or to _jamais vu,_ an erroneous sensation of unfamiliarity and displacement based on the misperceived oddity of familiar surroundings, an emotion frequently experienced by humans that is in part attributable to inferior human neural processing, a reality which you so blithely reject?”

“If you don’t shut up right now, you’re buying dinner,” McCoy informed him.

“On the contrary. As you know, our rations are provided free of charge by Starfleet as a condition of mutual contractual obligation--” They went out together, bickering comfortably.


	23. Chapter 23

Despite the promising afternoon, McCoy felt strangely nervous as they walked back to his quarters after dinner-- he’d just spent the better part of a week with Spock buried inside his body, for fucksake. So why did he feel like a blushing virgin?

Maybe it was the crew-- heads kept turning to follow them with fascination, and he knew that despite Jim’s best efforts, rumors were flying fast and thick. Probably it had a lot to do with the love bite that still peeked out of Spock’s collar, but he couldn’t bring himself to regret leaving it-- and apparently Spock had no problems with it, either, or he would have had M’Benga remove it.

Spock appeared oblivious to all the attention, moving with his customary calm grace, striding with hands clasped behind the small of his back. McCoy realized he was mirroring Spock’s posture, but didn’t change his stance; it felt comfortable and natural to walk side by side that way together. 

McCoy covered his discomfort by fussing with the room-- it was just as he’d left it when he hurried to the bridge to get beamed onto the shuttle. His bed was a rumpled mess, the down coverlet lying in untidy folds at its foot. He hadn’t prepared snacks or romantic lighting; even the movies were buried under a stack of padds and flimsiplast. 

He rushed around, growling with irritation at himself as he tidied up hastily, then got out some brandied chocolates, the best thing he could lay his hands on without leaving the room. He put in the movie and hit play, but was distracted suddenly. Spock sat down on the edge of the bed, and when McCoy sneaked a glance at him, he was looking down at the ruffled sheets, reaching to stroke his hand over them, then over McCoy’s pillow. His hand lingered, and McCoy saw him inhale, eyes closing, face oddly blissful.

 _My scent,_ McCoy realized, flashing back to that first savage joining. Spock had breathed deeply of him, drawing his scent inside his lungs. He felt his cock stir at the memory. 

When Spock raised his head again their eyes caught and held, a spark snapping between them. McCoy froze with the box of movies in his hand, swallowing thickly. Spock drew up the goose-down comforter and lay back on it, never breaking eye contact, and inhaled deeply, deliberately, letting his arms rest next to his head, palms up, parting his thighs as if preparing to cradle McCoy’s body: the very picture of invitation. 

Of... submission. Jesus Christ, _yes._

Suddenly it didn’t matter how much sex he’d had in the last few days; he was definitely game for some more. He stepped forward, drawn in spite of himself.

“What would you say,” McCoy croaked, then licked his lips and tried again. “If I said to hell with the competition and to hell with watching the movie and got right down to the main event?” He laid his hand on Spock’s thigh, sliding it upward suggestively. 

Spock’s eyes gleamed, and he reached for McCoy, drawing him in, tilting his head to the side to offer his throat. McCoy settled on top of him, nuzzling against the print of his own teeth. He felt Spock’s leg slide behind his knee, sending a wave of heat pulsing through his cock as he pushed down. Spock parted his thighs even wider as he lifted to meet the thrust, suggestive again of submission, offering without words.

Suddenly it was easy again, and McCoy smiled. “There’s plenty of time now….”

And there was. McCoy took plenty of time to kiss Spock until his lips were bruised dark jade, plenty of time to work his shirt up to his collarbones and explore his chest, licking and biting at his nipples. Plenty of time to nuzzle into his navel, inhaling the clean spice of his scent, to find the faintest lingering traces of musk and sweat at the creases of his thighs while McCoy gently teased his trousers off him. Plenty of time to nuzzle and lap at his cock, to taste him and tease him, to make him lift himself in a silent plea for more. 

Plenty of time to slick his fingers and open Spock, to watch his face as it went slack and yielding, to watch him lick his lips and to glimpse his white teeth sinking in the fullness of the lower one as McCoy replaced one finger with two. Plenty of time to find the sweet spot and learn that it worked just like a human’s. 

Plenty of time to lift Spock’s legs over his elbows and sink in slow, slow, making him wait, making him sweat. Plenty of time to kiss the whisper of a moan off his lips and to watch his lashes blink as he lay back and took it, his eyes soft and vulnerable, his lips parted. 

“Spock,” he whispered, his voice nearly breaking with the sudden ache of sweetness in his chest, threatening to bring tears to his eyes. He leaned forward, pressing Spock’s knees up against his shoulders, and reached for his hands, twining their fingers as his body moved, undulating in slow waves that built friction gradually until Spock began to gasp for breath, eyes wide, body quivering.

Spock’s eyelids fluttered and his eyes rolled back; his fingers tightened painfully as he came, silent but for the small breaths stuttering through his lips. Bliss in his mind, soft sweet fire in the link, pure contentment between them.

McCoy buried his face in Spock’s neck as the spasms of Spock’s body brought him over the edge, lazy and languorous and perfect. It seemed to last forever, his body spending its passion in long, slow pulses. He stroked his palms over Spock’s forearms, his quivering ribs, his sweat-damp flanks.

McCoy drew back to gaze at him, making sure Spock was all right, leaning in to nibble at his neck-- and finding the chain of his gift there, the little pendant with its logo shining in the hollow of Spock’s throat. He’d remembered to put it on again after the danger of damage was past. 

The movie was still playing in the background; McCoy recognized the dim sound of Bogey and Claude Raines walking away from the runway together to join the Free French in Brazzaville. 

“I think we’re maybe gonna be all right together. What do you think?” he asked softly, stroking one thumb over the little silver disk.

Spock very nearly smiled, the curve of his mouth softening to match the contentment in his eyes. “‘Leonard,’” he said, “‘I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.’”

**Author's Note:**

> She doesn't have to be pining after Spock (and in this story she isn't), but Christine Chapel belongs on the Enterprise and I won't have it any other way!
> 
> It's a real challenge navigating the rocky waters of all the Trek canons. At this point there are so many different versions of the characters it's a nightmare trying to keep voice and motives consistent! Apologies if I've failed.
> 
>  
> 
> The title of this piece is taken from a translated poem by Kahlil Gibran:
> 
> "On Friendship"
> 
> Your friend is your needs answered.  
> He is your field which you sow with love and reap with thanksgiving.  
> And he is your board and your fireside.  
> For you come to him with your hunger, and you seek him for peace.
> 
>  
> 
> When your friend speaks his mind you fear not the "nay" in your own mind, nor do you withhold the "ay."  
> And when he is silent your heart ceases not to listen to his heart;  
> For without words, in friendship, all thoughts, all desires, all expectations are born and shared, with joy that is unacclaimed.  
> When you part from your friend, you grieve not;  
> For that which you love most in him may be clearer in his absence, as the mountain to the climber is clearer from the plain.  
> And let there be no purpose in friendship save the deepening of the spirit.  
> For love that seeks aught but the disclosure of its own mystery is not love but a net cast forth: and only the unprofitable is caught.
> 
>  
> 
> And let your best be for your friend.  
> If he must know the ebb of your tide, let him know its flood also.  
> For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill?  
> Seek him always with hours to live.  
> For it is his to fill your need, but not your emptiness.  
> And in the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures.  
> For in the dew of little things the heart finds its morning and is refreshed.


End file.
